The getCAKE.com Website
The Approach
Along with the marketing team, we took over the maintenance, support and graphic design/production from the existing agency while adding edits, blog posts and much needed traffic along the way. We developed workflows that helped CAKE publish content at rate 500% faster than the previous team, even though we were anchored by less than optimal CMS software.
The Opportunity
I was contacted by CAKE to help bolster their marketing efforts and take responsibility for their existing website, after they experienced huge delays in making website updates. The current site was designed and developed by a very notable Interactive firm, but they me to work more intimately with them for their latest challenges to improve turnaround times on major site updates.
This was the first version / redesign of the homepage with clear, concise writing and a simpler design.
More portions of the homepage where I added even further simplification for ease of consumption by new visitors.
In the footer of the page we strove to keep things simple and clean while capturing users for nurturing and lead generation.
Lessons Learned
I had to tread carefully moving the responsibility away from the existing agency back to CAKE, documenting all of the conversations along the way. Thankfully, the existing agency complied with all of our requests which led to a seamless transition.
The Design Process
Re-establishing a new design process was key to the success of this endeavor. I worked very closely with the marketing team to document all protocols, production steps to ease the transfer of maintenance back to their corporate offices.
A year later, the site was redesigned by an agency that I helped qualify
I was asked if I wanted to redesign the site and at the time didn’t have the engineering resources I have today, so I opted to help select and guide another agency since I knew the amount of work was more than one resource could handle. Management really respected my logic and we proceeded to hire a new agency and kickstart the process.
Both the new agency and I recommended that the new website be built using WordPress, and CAKE would step away from the previous technology stack (as it was too hard to update the site and maintain the system), which ultimately made publishing new content easier and faster, saving CAKE tens of thousands every year in agency fees.
Along with the marketing team, I helped select the latest agency “Made by Grizzly” to redesign the website in 2014 and helped kick off this new chapter in CAKE’s history.