GPS Digital Marketing Agency Work

Designing websites and assets for small businesses

Geek Powered Studios (GPS) is a digital marketing company that helps small businesses increase leads and grow their businesses through search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click ads (PPC), and web design.

My Role:
Web/graphic designer

I worked at GPS for about two years supporting a number of small business clients by designing websites and other marketing/promotional material. This case study includes a sample of the types of work I personally produced for clients as well as a look into the design process.

Other design team members:
Blaine Bowers, creative director
Shavana Pinder, design team lead
Paul Capetola, web/graphic designer

small business websites

Working in small, cross-functional teams

Geek Powered Studios was a relatively small marketing agency, which meant frequent collaboration between employees and different displicines. Once a client signed on for marketing services, they would be assigned a team based on whoever had the most available bandwidth.

Each GPS client had a team of:

  • An account manager
  • A SEO specialist/content writer
  • A PPC specialist
  • A web/graphic designer

Once placed on a client team, I would serve as the designer for that client and be responsible for creating design deliverables and managing design requests. Typically, the largest and most time consuming project for a new client would be a website design and build.

Designing websites: establishing hierarchy

One of the most important first steps when I started a client site was establishing a clear information hierarchy and sitemap. Website stucture was not only important to ensure a smooth user experience, but also crucial to the SEO strategy. I worked closely with the SEO specialist to create an information architecture that would ensure smooth crawling process from search engines and contribute to strong rankings. A basic example:


I also utilized sketched wireframes and low-fidelity mockups to help plan out how pages would be structured before applying the final visual stylings.

sketch to wireframe to final design

Designing websites: building a brand

Clients that came to GPS ranged from small home-grown businesses to mid-sized established companies. Many of clients I worked with had never had a web presence, while others would come with a logo or an outdated website to start with. It required me to be creative and think flexibly; there was no one size fits all strategy.

Some of the tools I used to establish a brand and web presence included competive research, moodboard and color palette creation, and occasionally logo exploration, shown below.

moodboard with logos

Logo concepts and moodboard for an interior designer, inspired by plants and a love of the Southwest

Increasing conversions with digital advertisting

Designers at GPS also worked closely with the PPC specialists to create and test differnet types of display and social ads. These are the types of ads you might notice while on a news website or scrolling through Facebook.

Ads would be driven to the client's new website to increase visibility and gain more customer leads. My teammate and I would often A/B test different images (such as a different house photo) or different copy to see what would perform better and get more clicks.

example ads in different sizes

Examples of different sizes/configurations for display ads

example of an ad in a webpage

Examples of a display ad in context

Fielding a variety of design requests

Working in a small agency with a wide range of clients also meant that I took on a range of projects. Although my main job was designing websites, I also designed for other marketing channels.

A few other examples of marketing collateral I've created:

  • Landing pages (single-page websites)
  • E-commerce sites
  • Email campaigns
  • Organic social posts
  • Trifold brochures
  • Newsletters, flyers, and infographics