2017 has been quite the year for all of us over here at White Lion! We have had our share of highs as well as lows but we are grateful to once again make it to the end of another year fully intact, surrounded by a wonderful team!

But first, some White Lion Highlights from 2017

Our website, as well as our branding and offerings, got the facelift it deserved and it was a huge accomplishment for our team! We put in a lot of hours and energy to make it look great as well as functional. Our Creative Director, Charlie, who was the true visionary behind it all gave a recap of what we did as well as what we learned along the way.

We officially hosted our own internal hackathon for our development team. We actually hosted 2 successful hackathons where we explored the capabilities of the search platform Algolia and then successfully implemented the functionality into Hustler Turf’s Find a Retailer page. This was exciting in two ways: One, our development team came together to learn a new technology. Two, this technology was then used successfully on a client’s site. We are excited to see where the next hackathon will lead us!

After winning our annual holiday trivia 3 years in a row, Jared Hill was finally brought down by our BBQ master Nolan Morris! While we all love Jared, we were ready to see him dethroned. No one needs to win that much.

We welcomed several new client relationships to the White Lion team and launched some beautiful new sites including:

• Boys & Girls Club of the Austin Area
• Texas Apartment Association
• Hudson Gun Manufacturing

We made a commitment to offering Digital Marketing services this year. As the year has gone on we have created more offers to target strategy and planning, online marketing, content marketing, core messaging, social media strategy, and SEO. We continue to grow our digital marketing team and to learn and grow in this vertical and we are so excited by what we are seeing and doing.

We also added some new cubs to the extended White Lion family which we can’t stop oohing and aahing over! In January, Nick Kramer, our Director of Account Services, and his wife welcomed their first child, a son, Henry. In August, our Front-End Developer and Designer, Jared Hill, and his wife welcomed their second child, a daughter, Galilee. And in December, Our Senior Back-End Developer, Nolan Morris, and his wife welcomed their 3rd child, a daughter, Remy. All three were born happy and healthy and we are all over the moon about each, constantly demanding updates, stories, and photos!

Our Top 5 Blog Posts from 2017

We had some really talented contributors on our team this year and therefore great content come out of our blog. We wanted to make sure that you didn’t miss out so we compiled our 5 most popular blog posts from 2017 for you to take a look at or even revisit once more. Counting down from number 5:

5. Seven Quick User Experience Enhancements for Your Website

Your website needs to work for you and not against you. You’ve got one chance to make a first impression. When errors occur, they are likely to go unnoticed because your users are not going to tell you. This post explains 7 UX enhancements that you can do to make sure users get the most out of your website.

4. How to use Event Tracking to get more out of Google Analytics

Google Analytics does a great job capturing information about our website visitors. Offered by Google, Analytics tracks and reports website traffic and is the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. All it takes is a single snippet of code installed at the end of each page on a website. With Event Tracking, Google Analytics has given website owners the ability to track all sorts of on-page behavior.

3. How Home Base Office Allows Employees Opportunity to Choose the Best Place to Work

Following up on his original post about our new way to work, Leader of the Pride, Steve Kahle, reflected on how our new arrangement was going. (Hint: It was a home run!) The Home Base model leverages East Austin’s newest coworking spaces – Atmosphere Coworking – along with remote working options for our entire team. The benefits far outweigh the downside and we continue to be so happy that we took this leap of faith.

2. Hudson Mfg Disrupts the Handgun Market with an Attractive New Website!

Hudson Manufacturing group is a newly emerging player in the handgun industry, and we were thrilled about the opportunity to help with their product launch and development of their new website. We continue to be impressed by the way that the Hudson team has brought this product to market, and their vision for the website was no exception.

1. How a Hackathon can Help You Develop New Tools for Your Website

As I mentioned above, 2017 was the year that we finally got to experiment with an internal hackathon and we were so pleased with the results that we wrote a blog post about it. A hackathon, an event typically having a specific focus or goal, usually lasting several days, in which a group of people meets to collaborate intensively on a software project. ˛

Are you ready to learn how to be more strategic?

Whether you are a follower of our blog or are new to our blog and wanted to know where to start, hopefully this list has given you something worth reflecting on.  We’ve got a lot in store for next year and hope you do too. Soon, we’ll be launching the first episode of our new video series 1-Minute Digital Strategy to help you learn more about digital marketing. Here’s to a great new year and let us know how we can help make sure you are a success!