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A brand new look for Gibe

Today we’ve replaced our old site with a shiny new one.

We are extremely pleased with the new look. It showcases who we are, what we do, it reflects our new brand, is in keeping with our new office and reflects how we’ve grown up over the years.

We hope you enjoy the site and welcome any feedback you might have.

The project itself has been a worthwhile and interesting experience.

As any one running an agency will know the hardest project to complete is updating your own website. Our lovely clients are always top of the list.

What has been great about this project is that it has helped everyone involved remember the challenges our clients face.

Challenge 1 – Design and UX

Creating great design and user-experiences (UX) is one of the core things we do very well. When designing for our clients we throw all of our passion and collective expertise into everything we do.

 This has been no different with our own site; but of course achieving the perfection we expect for our own clients on our own site takes time.

The design has been thought through and tweaked and adjusted to make it present at it’s best across all devices. It has been through an evolution and will continue to evolve as we identify bits we agree work well, and bits we agree could work better.

Challenge 2 - Content

Writing great content is always one of the hardest challenge. You can always imagine it only takes ten minutes to write a great blog article or a page about what we do; the reality is it takes far longer to write and craft really great content.

Are we using the correct tone of voice? Is it true that less is more? What about SEO – surely more is is more? If we say this about ourselves can it be misinterpreted, does it truly sell who we are?

And then there is selecting images. There is plenty of great stock photography out there that is royalty free and licensed for commercial use, but is it cliché, does it reflect who we are? Whenever possible the right thing to do is use your own photography.

But as I’m sure all our clients know that takes time and money to get the right shots.

Challenge 3 – fighting perfection

We’re still not 100% happy with it. Could it be better? Yes it could!

This is a challenge all of our clients face.

When we agree the scope of a project we’ll have a clear idea of what is the minimum needed for launch. And we can then add new features on top of that to make the solution even better.

That’s the approach we’ve taken with this site. We know there are more things we wanted to do, but also realised that if we waited until it was absolutely perfect more time would pass and our old site would still be live.

Instead, we have launched our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – a site we’re happy with, but one we plan to continuously improve and make even better over the course of this year.

What this project has taught us

So this project has reminded myself and our team of not just how great Gibe are at producing visually and technically great websites, but also how fantastic our clients are. The love and care they put into creating great content for their websites is part of the process that leads to great results.

Every project we do is not simply chucking out a generic website; it’s a collaborative and creative process where our team comprises not just people from Gibe but every stakeholder, copy-writer, editor, manager, etc clientside who is also involved in the creation of great work.

We hope you like the site.

If you’re an existing or prospective client please get in touch. If you’re in the software and website industry yourself and like the sound of Gibe then take a look at our careers section. We’re always looking to expand our team with talented and like minded individuals.

About the Author

Hugh Parr-Burman avatar Read more about Hugh Parr-Burman

Hugh Parr-Burman, Head of Production

Hugh is our Head of Production with over 15 years of experience in the digital and marketing sector. He's passionate about great project delivery and loves the "big picture" view as well as getting stuck into the fine detail.