Blog · Web Design & Development
A Fresh Look for Scout, and Why We Rebuilt
We rebuilt our own website from the ground up. Here is what we changed, what we kept, and what we learned being our own client for once.
If you have been to our site before, it looks different today. We rebuilt the whole thing, and I want to tell you why, because the reasons are the same ones we bring to every project we take on.
Honestly? Rebuilding your own website is harder than building anyone else’s. We know every rule, so we argued about every one of them. But we kept coming back to one idea, and it made every decision easier.
A site should feel like meeting us before you meet us
Most people who reach out to us have already read the site, sometimes twice, before they ever pick up the phone. So the site has a job to do. It should tell you who we are, show you the kind of work we do, and make you feel like you already have a sense of us. Warm, straight with you, clearly good at the craft.
The old site did some of that. The new one does all of it, and it is faster and cleaner while it is at it.
What we changed
A few things we focused on, and why each one matters for your site too:
- Speed. The new site is built to load fast, especially on a phone. A slow site loses people before they read a word, and search engines notice too. We treat performance as part of the design, not an afterthought.
- Mobile first. We designed for the phone screen first, then scaled up. That is where most people will actually see you, so it should be the best experience, not the compromised one.
- Clarity. We cut the clutter and said plainly what we do: we build websites, plus the content and search that bring people to them. If you had to guess what a business does from its homepage, the homepage is not doing its job.
- Real people, real work. New photos of the two of us and our actual workspace, and our work front and center. No stock photos of strangers in a glass office.
What we kept
The important things did not change. Same phone number, same people answering it, same way of working: we learn your business first, then build the whole system around what makes it different. The look got sharper. The way we treat your project did not move an inch.
What being our own client taught us
Here is the honest lesson. Even knowing everything we know, it is hard to make decisions about your own business objectively. You are too close to it. That is a big part of what a good outside team gives you. Past the building itself, you get clear-eyed judgment about what to keep and what to let go.
If your own website is on the list to fix, take a look around the new site and see if it feels like the kind of work you want for your business. Then let’s talk.