Ever wondered what happens when a marketing agency redesigns and builds its own website? If so, here is a recreation of an approximation of a facsimile of a diary we might have kept if we had thought to plan for it, inspired by the last time we did this a little more than 11 years ago.
We always put our clients’ needs first of course, so we had to carve out time and decide to make this site a priority to carry it across the finish line. But making a website, even for a company that makes websites, is somehow harder the second, third, or fourth time around.
It’s like trying to take a better selfie after you’ve already posted the first one on social media and racked up hundreds of likes. All these years later, you know it’s no longer an accurate reflection of who you are today. But change can be scary, and what if nobody likes the way you look now?
Exactly when this website project officially began, however, no one can quite say. Ashley has notes from 2019 about her plans for a new site design. She also has a few sketches from 2020. But you might say we officially started this process in April 2022, so let’s examine the rough timeline of events starting then:
April 2022
The last update of the website (originally launched in December 2014) is still going strong, like a box of Cold War Twinkies or your granddaddy’s flip phone. But it’s been in use for more than seven years, so Rare Bird’s leadership decides we really should do something about that. Ashley scribbles a few ideas in her notebook.
October 2022
Six months later, the company hires a new writer who has no idea what he’s getting into with this new website. We’ll ask the new writer to start crafting copy for the website once he gets the hang of things.
May 2023
It only took the new writer a few weeks to get the hang of things. Maybe we should ask him to start writing the website. He’s only the newest member of an organization that will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a big party in a few months. Surely that makes him the right person upon whose shoulders we should build this massive undertaking that the rest of us website-building professionals haven’t done in all these years.
We begin to believe we might actually redesign our website soon. And why not? We make websites, after all.
This is what we do. This is who we are.
Over pizza, we discuss the possibilities. Wow, pizza has gotten more expensive since 2014. Also, “hot honey” is now a thing, even on pizza. We still order a veggie pizza for Ashley, but it’s always the last box finished.
June 2023
The new writer begins drafting website copy. Soon after, a certain marketing director expresses concern that the entire website isn’t already written by her completely arbitrary deadline. She doesn’t want her team to be the reason this website isn’t finished on time.
After a heavy sigh, the new writer finishes the copy even though he knows it’s not the highest priority right now, and Ashley returns to her trusted notebook and the concepts she first scratched out a few years ago.
In Slack, Ashley and the writer have a few spirited real-time discussions about words emerging one at a time amid other rolling/scrolling animations on the homepage. It’s all very exciting.
Jon joins the team as our video guru. Someone recognizes that this opens up some exciting possibilities for our new website (probably Jon). Someone else realizes this means we’ll need to rethink how we approach its design (probably Ashley).
July 2023
Nothing is happening with the website. Surprisingly, the world keeps turning. The new writer is added to the planning committee for the 25th anniversary party.
We order more pizza. Robert asks if we can please have Chipotle instead, but we ignore him.
August 2023
“I know a new website is one of our priorities,” someone in leadership says, “but our current website still works just fine.”
Also, we have that anniversary party. Good times.
October 2023
The new writer has been here for a year now. He’s no longer new, which means we have to stop calling him “the new writer.” He’s great, but the new website still does not exist. He keeps reminding us that he’s done his part.
November 2023
Someone wonders aloud if we’ll ever find enough “down time” (re: a lull in client work) for a developer to tackle this website. Maybe it’s something we can do in 2024.
January 2024 through August 2024
Client work keeps happening. Important, billable, life-sustaining, deadline-driven client work. Move the needle, people! Our new website will just have to understand. The new website is patient. The new website is kind. But either way, the new website’s just going to have to wait.
August 2024
A few beloved members of the Flock’s marketing team have departed. The few who remain—the word guy (a.k.a. The Writer Formerly Known as the New Writer), the video guy (Jon), and the Swiss Army knife (Tom, who does a little of everything)—stop scheduling team meetings and…actually, it’s pretty dang sweet to not have meetings, even if it’s because people you liked working with have moved on.
September 2024
Ashley makes a bold proposal: What if those three marketing yahoos join up with her and the designers to form a new team, like some kind of marketing agency Voltron? Their days of no more meetings may be over, but surely they’ll feel a deep sense of belonging from being part of this newly-formed creative team.
Ashley’s new team agrees to get Rare Bird’s website overhaul back on track.
December 2024
The office again participates in a White Elephant gift exchange during the holidays. The writer brings one bottle of booze (Woodford Reserve!) and receives a different bottle of booze (Jeppson’s Malört!) as his gift before trading it for yet a third bottle of booze (artisanal gin!) someone brought.
Before the end of the year, Ashley concocts a plan to get the site designed by a certain date in 2025.
January 2025 through May 2025
Major design elements begin to take shape, and many of them will survive through launch. We’re feeling good about getting the design completed by summer.
Now that actual pages are being designed and clear progress is being made, the writer decides to revise the original copy, which was “late” two years ago. Plumes of dust seep out of his laptop. It’s been so long, Dropbox has converted the Google Doc files into Word documents (yuck).
A renewed sense of urgency takes hold. With help from Alysia, Ashley carries the majority of the design work forward. They’re like the Batman and Robin Batman of web design!
New concepts emerge. Old concepts are mourned and given proper sendoffs. Troy and Mike tackle the design work for certain other pages. Jon and Tom start preparing images and videos for the portfolio because we’ve never fully showcased all of the awesomeness Rare Bird delivers for our clients.
We definitely eat more pizza. Robert again begs for Chipotle just once, but…whatever, Robert.
June 2025
Someone asks how the website is coming along. There’s an awkward silence. Someone coughs—not quite as loud as Troy sneezes, maybe, but enough that everyone gets the message. To keep the peace, we all walk over to a bakery on Main Street to get a cookie.
Cookies help.
July through August 2025
Some of us start to take vacation days, like this website is already done or something. A few small elements may need to come into focus, but the design is basically done, it turns out, so Batman and Batman meet with Kimberly and Josiah, who will be the developers for this project.
Brad spins up a password-protected dev site where the Dev Duo can work on the new website without messing up our current one.
Kimberly begins the heavy lifting in WordPress. Josiah begins to think about how to implement the intensive styling elements, including that animation on the front page, which seemed like such a good idea in 2023, 2024, and earlier this year.
In truth, it really is a great idea in any year, and it will look amazing. But saying “let’s animate these on the scroll!” and actually animating words and images on the scroll are two wildly different things.
We order yet more pizza, which keeps getting more expensive by the year. Actually, everything seems more expensive in 2025. As Jim tallies the non-billable hours we’ve spent on this website, he realizes that creating Rare Bird’s new website—wherein every hour spent is, by default, an hour we’re not doing billable work for clients—is also more expensive in 2025.
October 2025
Someone suggests we could launch without some of the fancier elements in place. Maybe we could push those elements to Phase 2.? Unfortunately, we’re already deep into Phase 437, so that someone is immediately escorted from the building.
Sorry, we’re now told that person was just leaving to get coffee at Bovaconti.
What? OK, we’re told it was actually Java House.
No? Which one? The coffee place by the Dumpster? Why didn’t they use our coffee machine? Look, I’m trying to write a blog post here…
The writer is informed there’s still a lot of lorem ipsum on the dev site, because sometimes designers are like, “Heyyyy, this part over here needs something. I don’t know what. But you should wordsmith a little verbiage over here and make it less janky.”
The writer fends off the urge to remove his eyelashes with tweezers at the use of both wordsmith and verbiage. That’s called being a professional. The use of janky, however, warms his shriveled heart.
November 2025
Progress is made. This project is far enough along that we decide it’s OK to plan an outdoor company event for November 9, only to cancel it a few days ahead of time when we realize that the weather is going to be horrendous and planning an outdoor company event for November is…well, honestly, it’s just kind of dumb. We know better.
One day later this month, we skip the pizza and order Chipotle. Robert is so happy! Oh, and Robert officially becomes an American citizen, so Kayla brings in a red, white, and blue cake for the occasion.
Cake helps.
December 2025
We’re launching this month. Definitely this month. Everyone agrees. We shake hands. We make eye contact. Not the lingering, creepy kind, just a brief acknowledgment of how far we’ve come together—and how happy we are that our writer knows how to spell “acknowledgment.”
One day, Jim says, “Today feels like a pizza day.” Honestly, he says that about 3-4 times per month. We don’t think he’s allowed to eat pizza at home.
We’ve ordered pizza so many times during this process that Rare Bird should have bought stock in the company. Can you buy stock in HotBox? If that stock gets popular, does it become a HotStock? Is the online site where you buy those stocks called a StockBox?
The writer, obviously in need of a break, is told to use his remaining vacation days.
Early January 2026
OK, so we’ve now rolled over into another new year. The writer is refreshed and back in action! It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and we’re feeling good about this website as we plow through the month.
This time, we order pizza from Donato’s. It’s delicious! Good thing we didn’t buy stock in HotBox. We may have to switch permanently.
Late January 2026
We can see the finish line. It looks beautiful. But we have questions.
- “Did anyone look at this site on mobile?”
- “How does it look in Safari?”
- “Did anyone test this on a tablet?”
- “Why does that font have that weird spacing?”
- “Should the animation be faster?” (Yes, always.)
- “Does anyone have a better idea for a 404 page?” (No, the “Wad’s Up?” is all-time great 404 copy. Let’s keep it.)
The writer clacks away on some meta descriptions, whips up another CTA or two, then makes a surprise tweak to a paragraph that had seemed acceptable for more than two years, since his first stitch of copy for this site.
Dang, this animation really needs to go faster. Much faster. Five or six of us are thinking about how to solve this problem now.
Kimberly finds twelve things that need fixing since the last time she worked on this site.
Josiah finds seven more.
Ashley finds seventeen more.
But none of them point out that the “Ready to take wing?” CTA has somehow morphed into “Ready to wing?”
How the hell did that happen? It’s not the writer’s error, but he’s tempted to leave it. Instead he changes it to something else entirely after taking a screenshot of this mistake for posterity.
Brad gets dizzy about all the uncompleted tasks on the Launch Checklist, which is shorter than we feared, but longer than we’d hoped. The team rallies. Designers, developers, whatever the hell Tom is—everybody comes together.
February 2, 2026
The day has finally arrived. We will make the website live today.
No? WTF? Why not? Ugh.
February 3, 2026
The day has finally arrived. We will make the website live today.
We’re doing this. We’re not panicking. We are ready to wing.
9:47 AM
Testing continues. How’s it look on mobile?
So many smartphones light up in our office, you’d think we were at a Taylor Swift concert. BTW, Taylor got engaged to that football player! She’s finally found happiness and Rare Bird has a new website. Don’t tell us the impossible isn’t possible. Dream big, people!
10:08 AM
Everything looks pretty good. All this video! The animations! The new blog! The new portfolio! A few small tweaks are needed, so everyone holds their breath while four different Birds are logged into WordPress at the same time.
10:19 AM
Someone jokes that we won’t have to do this again for a few more years. “More like a decade,” someone says. Let’s do this again in 2036, everybody!
11:37 AM
Brad hovers over the launch button. We laugh because there’s no launch button. “Flip the switch,” we always say to Brad, but it’s just Brad and his laptop. Beep boop. Like the spoon in The Matrix, there is no switch. One of the younger Birds notes that The Matrix was a popular movie franchise in the late 1900s. Those of us who remember seeing it in a theater begin to melt.
11:55 AM
During a marketing planning meeting, Jim—who in all other ways is an incredibly original thinker—decides to order pizza once again.
Alysia isn’t eating much pizza these days, someone says.Well, we can get her a gluten-free pizza without cheese. We call her over to the marketing meeting and talk through what special pizza we should order for her, despite her polite protests about not needing anything since she’s brought a perfectly fine salad. We talk her into getting a cauliflower crust drizzled with olive oil instead of marinara, topped with chicken, spinach, garlic, and a drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette.
I mean, just look at it:
11:58 AM
While we’re ordering pizza, Brad flips the switch without telling us and we launch the site for real.
A little more than 11 years since the last time we overhauled our site, 6-7 years since Ashley’s earliest notes and sketches for this version, and tw0-plus years since the writer first drafted copy for it, our new site is live.
1:12 PM
The pizza arrives. Ashley ordered some special mini-bundt cakes so we can celebrate. We eat pizza and mini-bundt cakes and for the briefest of moments, everything is right with the world because our new website is live.
Ashley, Alysia, Kimberly, Josiah, Brad, Jon, Tom, and everybody else have made something truly special. Everyone in the Flock should be genuinely proud—everyone except Robert, that is, because he was busy eating not-Chipotle and doing actual client work around the clock for the last three years.
Grab a slice of pizza (or five), check out our new website, and let us know what you think!
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