A new site to foster the growth of a new brand

Carta had just renamed/rebranded (from eshares) and wanted a newly redesigned website to match. They had done the design work internally and approached Flickerbox looking for a partner to build out the newly designed site and help them maintain it post launch.

In addition, they were looking for some help selecting a new platform for the site. The marketing team wanted the freedom and flexibility to change content and build out pages on their own and engineering wanted a stable platform they wouldn’t have to manage or worry about.

Coordinating multiple teams for a successful launch

Before we could begin any of the build work, we had to settle on the platform and host. Flickerbox worked with the Carta team to better understand the use cases the Marketing team would face most regularly and determined that WordPress would be a great fit. With its stable nature, availability of supporting plugins and ease of use it aligned great with Carta’s needs. We then worked with the engineering team to recommend a host that would meet their needs for security and uptime. With WordPress as the selected platform, Pantheon was our host of choice.

With the site’s infrastructure squared away, it was time to start the build out. Our collaborative process allowed us to work directly with the designer to head off issues such as responsive tweaks that so often only come up, once you get into the build phase. As with all our custom site builds, we put as much attention into the front end build as we do with the admin experience. Once we’d identified the ways in which the marketing team would utilize the site, we structured the admin to allow those tasks to be easy to access and easily completed.

And easily completed they were. Carta very quickly took ownership of their page updates, page creation and content workflow. Different members from a few different teams got to work immediately, adding their new content to the site, without any help from Flickerbox. It was clear they understood the power of the tool once they started asking for new templates, not new pages. They knew that with the right new building blocks, the site would enable them to build anything they needed. 

The Carta team is a dedicated group of folks, committed to pushing the idea of equity for all and it was great to enable such a talented team to accomplish their goals and beyond. We always enjoy the opportunity to partner with a company as they push off from the docks, ambitiously setting sail in uncharted waters. 

With the front end built and the admin experience in place, it was time to work with Carta Engineering to cut over to the new site while at the same time, releasing the dependency on the Product.

A robust and curated editorial experience

The new site launched smoothly and cutover was a success. Carta assumed control and right away started making new pages without our intervention. You know, you raise them, you teach them manners and then you have to let them go. If you’ve done a good job, they flourish. We didn’t hear too much from Carta after the launch as they were busy using the system we built for them. Once they had Flickerbox transitioned into its maintenance and support phase for Carta. The marketing team dove in right away and quickly realized that they would need new templates, new functionality and new integrations. While we were busy fulfilling those requests, we were also working in the background to make sure that the environment was healthy, stable and current. 

Carta was also at a point where they wanted to cut the ties that existed between the product and the marketing websites. Up to this point, work on the marketing site was tied to product releases, which was interfering with marketing’s ability to keep the site current and reflect the evolving product offering.