For over a decade, we’ve helped brands improve online experiences while prioritizing relationships.
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Top Chicago Web Design Agency
Idea Marketing Group is one the best Chicago web design agencies around with an abundance of reviews and awards to back it up. We work intimately with consumer goods and manufacturing brands to help them build, maintain, and market their websites. We focus on digital marketing, website design, website support, and security.
Experts in helping brands deliver better online experiences
We’ve teamed up with brands invested in digital marketing since 2009, starting in a small office in the West Loop of Chicago. We know the web design and marketing industry so well that typically, we answer questions before you even have to ask them. Not telepathic but pretty much. We not only make things better for your visitors but we make managing and marketing your website a breeze.
Websites. Made Better.
Check back often to see recent web design projects and digital marketing campaigns.
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Together, we’ll identify what you need most to win online.
A Better Website
We get it. Most people we talk with hate their current website. We’ll guide you through the entire process of building a website that does more for your business.
Website Support
Websites are the foundation of all marketing efforts. We’re quick to respond on requests, we make recommendations and continuously improve your website.
Website Marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO), landing page creation, speed improvements, and key phrase rankings are all things we really get excited about.
PPC Advertising
Our team is certified with top advertising platforms like Google and LinkedIn. We know how to make the most of your online marketing budget.
Yes! We’re proud to be in the top 1% of the 150,000+ agencies on Clutch.co and rated as a Top Chicago Web Design Agency as well as national recognition year after year. Clutch interviews our clients, collects data, and compares competitors to help brands like yours find quality agencies for projects. We simply share a link with our clients and then Clutch takes over. Everything that is shared comes directly from our clients. No extra fluff or mystery as to who actually wrote it. We also have a top ranking in 10 Best Chicago Web Design Firms.
Others awards include multiple Web Excellence Awards, Best of the Small Business Awards, Small Business of the Year, American Web Design Awards, the Entrepreneurial Excellence Award by the Daily Herald in Chicago, and achieved the #1 spot for Top Marketing Strategy Agencies Worldwide from The Manifest.
We also have 60+ Google Reviews recognizing our customer service and work.
When was the web design agency founded?
Idea Marketing Group was founded on July 15, 2009 in Chicago’s West Loop. You can say we were born and raised as a true Chicago web design agency, right off of Van Buren and Racine overlooking I-290. Yes, we could see the miles of brake lights in heart of rush hour. Our neighbors included Phil Stefani Signature Restaurant Group as well as Blue Plate Catering, two Chicago staples for food and hospitality.
Why is the agency called Idea?
Everything starts as an idea. We’ve become very good at helping to develop ideas with brands and seeing through the execution to make an idea become a reality. Whether it is purely with digital marketing services focused on search engine optimization or what we’ve become known for in Chicago, web design and development. Have a great marketing idea? We can help make it happen.
Proof is in the Pudding
See a few example website and digital marketing case studies from our Chicago web design agency.
Driving Social Justice
A Non-Profit Group Dedicated to Equality
Now rebranded as Impact for Equity, previously BPI Chicago. Their work is focused on police accountability, the criminal legal system, and housing. BPI utilizes a combination of legal tools, policy research, advocacy, organizing, and convening to work toward transformational change.
A Non-Profit Website Design that Wasn’t Driving Social Action
BPI Chicago reached out to a local Chicago web design company, Idea, to create a nonprofit web design for the WordPress Content Management System. BPI was looking for a new website that would help inform people who are concerned with public interest law.
The new custom web design needed to feature clear, easy navigation that highlighted critical information. Users needed to be encouraged to get involved or take action in the form of donations. The previous website was not driving the kind of results that our clients needed to help initiate serious social reforms.
BPI Chicago also needed a website that was easy to manage and update as needed. On the social justice front, things can change rapidly and the BPI Chicago team needed to be able to adjust their website and promote new information quickly. Their current nonprofit web design did not provide the mobility that BPI Chicago wanted as a forerunner in social equity causes.
Website load speeds across different platforms were also a major priority for BPI. Social justice causes tend to attract a younger demographic, which means that those users would likely be accessing BPI’s information through a mobile device. Therefore, the website needed to be optimized for mobile devices, and load quickly.
Another major pain point for BPI Chicago was its current search engine ranking. If their website was not ranking for their targeted keywords, they were missing out on donations, volunteers, and awareness for their organization. They needed a website that would rank higher in the search results. A lack of SEO strategy was hurting the success of their current non-profit web design.
Solution
Driving Social Change with an Integrated Web Strategy
Idea’s experts in non-profit web design approached this project with an integrated web strategy focus. Our Chicago web design team would address the issues facing BPI by proposing a new website that would support its mission. The new website would address the current issues BPI Chicago was facing and give their team greater control over their content and messaging.
Our team would also help remedy their technical and non-technical SEO so the new custom WordPress website would reach a larger audience through better search result ranking. Combined with the new website these adjustments would drive much higher traffic levels to their website and reach their desired target audience.
Custom Web Design
Implementing an Integrated Web Strategy with Top Non-Profit Web Design
This custom WordPress website would reflect the passion of their organization while presenting a professional look by leveraging modern web design themes. In addition to better reflecting their organization, their new website featured an improved UI/UX design that helped visitors find the info relevant to them. The improved organization and navigation of the website build trust with their target audience and generate better conversion rates. Trust is an extremely important factor for non-profit web design.
We built the website with the BPI team in mind, making sure that the website was easy to manage and update as needed without bogging down the website’s functionality. The BPI team could easily manage the new website without fear of breaking or slowing down the website.
The new BPI custom web design also benefits from much faster load speeds, which would also reduce bounce and increase engagement. Each page loads quickly whether the user is on a mobile or desktop device.
Our experts in non-profit web design also ensured that mobile optimization was a priority, meaning users would have the same high-quality website experience across various devices.
SEO
Optimizing SEO as Part of Our Integrated Web Strategy
While our custom web design team worked on updating the website to perform more efficiently and provide a better user experience; our team of SEO experts got to work making sure that it would rank well in search engine results. SEO improvements are a key element of a successful integrated web strategy.
We spent time completing research and analysis to find the best keyword opportunities for BPI Chicago to rank. Once we’d identified the ideal keyword list we implemented these across the website to help their pages start ranking as part of our comprehensive SEO strategy.
Throughout the new website copy, we’ve included the careful use of numerous SEO phrases that help improve BPI’s search engine rankings. These phrases help draw more traffic to the website and increase BPI’s reach.
We also made sure to improve the technical SEO of BPI’s website. This means including the right keyphrases in various title tags and descriptions, headers, and of course alt tags. Each of these attributes plays a big role in the overall integrated web strategy.
By covering all of these various areas of technical SEO the website’s overall SEO score greatly improved. The new BPI Chicago website has a score of 100 in SEO and Best Practices on Google Page Insights. With a custom web design and a top SEO strategy, BPI’s website had become a true asset to the organization.
Website Design Award
Bringing Home a Prestigious Award for Our Non-Profit Custom Web Design
After our work on BPI’s custom web design the website was entered in a prestigious web design competition that features thousands of entries from more than 60 countries, the annual Web Excellence Awards. The non-profit web design category featured numerous unique social justice and non-profit websites competing for the top award. A panel of website and activist experts consulted to determine the activism category winner, our very own non-profit web design entry, BPI Chicago.
Our custom web design work for our client won a Web Excellence award and was featured on the competition’s website for one full year. This created valuable backlinks and brought even more attention to the BPI cause.
Superior Custom Web Design for Superior Beverage
An Expert in Beverage Distribution
Superior Beverage continually meets its customers’ needs through its total beverage portfolio approach, operational excellence, and market insights. They are well known throughout the beverage industry, having strategic partnerships with established brands like Goose Island Brewing and many more.
A Beverage Distributor That Needed Custom Website Features
Superior Beverage was a growing consumer goods brand that wasn’t supported by its current website. To maintain their growth, they needed a custom web design that would meet their evolving needs.
As a beverage distributor, their website needed to be easy to use and provide necessary product info. On their current website, it was not easy to display product selections, or for users to search their product inventory. This was costing their business revenue.
Another issue affecting the website was user navigability. Overall the web design needed improvement, a focus on the customer journey was missing plus certain elements simply looked outdated. Creating a better user experience would drive more business for Superior Beverage.
Solution
A New CPG Website for a Beverage Industry Leader
To address the issues facing the Superior Beverage website our team proposed a custom web design project. The new custom WordPress website would solve each of the unique issues they were experiencing.
Our custom web design team began by building the functionality that would be needed for the new website. We used an integrated API process that would allow for their products to display quickly and correctly.
We designed a search and filter function so that their users could easily search the entire product inventory. Now users could filter based on their search criteria and spend less time searching for products. This would help reduce bounce and increase overall conversion.
These robust technical features were built quickly and would be easily manageable by the Superior beverage team. Their team would easily be able to manage and edit the website as needed, which was critical since their inventory changes frequently. Based on their stock the team could promote items they needed to sell quickly.
In addition to the technical improvements, the website also benefitted from better load speeds. By creating a custom WordPress website we removed old or broken functionality that was slowing down the page load speeds.
Custom Web Design
A Custom Web Design That Prioritized User Experience
As we completed backend updates, our front-end development team worked to make a more user-friendly site. Improvements to the user journey were one of our main priorities.
A newly organized and navigable website menu and layout serve to improve the user journey along with cosmetic UI changes to give a more modern feel to the user experience. The website builds trust on the first interaction with its target audience. Additional features like improved CTAs also help drive more conversion than the previous website.
With the rise in mobile users, new custom web design projects need to be mobile responsive, providing the same experience across mobile, tablet, and desktop browsers. Our team ensured that the Superior Beverage website was built to meet mobile optimization standards. The new responsive and intuitive design for Superior Beverage encourages customers to visit and engage with their website no matter what device they choose to use.
SEO
Building a Better SEO Strategy to Improve Website Rankings
As our custom web design team improved the website functionality and layout, our expert marketing team got to work on improving the client’s SEO strategy. A comprehensive SEO plan is crucial to a successful integrated web strategy.
We began by researching and identifying keyword opportunities for the new website. By including keyword variations we were able to uncover valuable SEO opportunities. If we targeted these keywords on the new website we could help our client rank higher in the search results.
Next, using those keywords we began improving the technical SEO for the custom WordPress website. To build a strong SEO strategy your website needs to meet the technical SEO requirements which include a variety of factors like meta tags, titles, alt tags and more. These attributes help signal to search engine crawlers that your website content is valuable and relevant to specific users.
Finally, we made sure SEO was used correctly on the audience-facing side of the new website. Core pages focused on specific keywords to build the ranking for those phrases. The most valuable keywords appeared through headlines, copy, and other content. The repeated use of these phrases in the right way will increase our client’s website ranking over time.
Their new updated SEO means that Superior Beverage would start ranking higher in the search results and receive more traffic.
Web Design Award
Our Chicago Web Design Team Wins an International Competition For Website Design
After we completed our work on the Superior Beverage CPG website we were excited to learn that our custom web design work had won an award. Each year the Web Excellence awards accept thousands of entries from over 60 countries to compete for awards in specific website categories.
A panel of website and CPG experts determined that Superior Beverage had the best custom web design in the Alcohol and Wine category. This Web Excellence Award demonstrates how beneficial the work of our Chicago web design team is!
Carmex Lip Balm Custom Design + Website Support
A World Renowned Lip Balm Manufacturer
Carmex is an internationally recognized lip balm brand that has been providing the world with lip treatment for many decades. As a family brand, Carma Labs cares deeply about its customers and employees. Currently operating in more than 60 countries and regions around the globe.
Finding a Balm Solution With a Top Digital Marketing Agency
The Carmex brand has been an American staple for many years, and as the CPG brand continues to grow they needed brand manager support and tools to fix some of the website issues they were encountering.
With a variety of issues affecting their website, and of course the overall brand performance, they turned to the CPG manufacturing web design and digital marketing experts at Idea. They relied on our experienced manufacturing web design team for assistance with the following issues:
Reduced Brand Manager Support Capabilities
Any successful CPG brand needs the right Brand Manager support and tools, and a huge part of their toolkit is the website. A website that is difficult to manage, or update, can spell trouble for the brand. In this case, Carmex’s brand managers didn’t have the support they need to make changes to the website. Essentially any website updates, like website information, graphics, product pages, and more, were made virtually impossible because of the difficult back-end management. Without fixing their website, the Carmex team would be unable to add or feature new products, a major problem for the brand.
The limited website management was a direct result of previous website partners using bad code and other poor design choices. This led to decreasing control for the Carmex brand management team over time.
Poor Website Functionality = Poor User Experience
A website’s functionality is incredibly important to the user experience. If there are bugs or broken functionality on the website, then your target audience is likely to bounce.
With numerous bugs and poor functionality, the Carmex website was not providing the great user experience that one would expect from such a top-rated consumer goods brand. These issues were leading to decreased performance for the CPG brand website.
One of the worst issues was the slow website load speeds that users were experiencing, which was only getting worse with each website addition.
Mobile Optimization Wasn’t a Priority
Their previous website was not built with a mobile-first mindset, which means their website was not optimized for mobile users’ experience. With mobile user numbers increasing each year, this is a major issue for many top CPG brands.
Mobile optimization was one of the first problems we discussed during our brand manager support meeting. Making sure that users had a uniform experience, whether on mobile, tablet, or desktop was sorely needed. Everything on the website needed to load and function properly across devices, which was not currently happening.
Solution
A New CPG Website That Assisted with Brand Manager Support
Due to the scope of issues plaguing the Carmex website, we presented a website redesign proposal that would address all the previously mentioned problems. Small updates or website support options would not accomplish enough to meet our client goals.
Our team of custom web design experts would rebuild the entire Carmex website and address the issues that they had shared with us, along with some additional improvements we recommended.
Brand Manager Support Through Improved Control of the CPG Website
First, our team tackled addressing the issue of limited brand manager support opportunities due to poor website management capabilities.
Our team of top manufacturing web design experts got to work removing faulty code and functionality that were causing website errors. Now the brand managers would be able to update the website menu, add products and make other website adjustments as needed. This allowed for better brand manager support when it was needed.
One other issue with form submissions was resolved by integrating Zoho forms, which automatically categorizes submitted forms correctly. This integration greatly reduced the workload on the Carmex website brand management team.
Custom Web Design
Fixing Broken Functionality For Faster Website Load Speeds And A Better User Experience
While fixing the backend bugs our manufacturing web design team also worked to update website processes. Outdated transitions and features that were slowing the website down were removed in favor of clean modern navigation styles. Now, the website would have lightning-fast load speeds, and they wouldn’t be slowed down by future website additions. The new Carmex website load speed score was in the 90-100 range on Google Page Insights. This was a desktop load speed increase of over 40%.
Users would no longer be frustrated by pages that took extra seconds to load or failed to load at all. Now every page on the Carmex website would load quickly and correctly for their target audience.
Optimizing Their CPG website for Mobile Users
The new website was built with a mobile-first mindset, which means the new Carmex website would load correctly on mobile, tablet, and desktop. The design would change based on screen size but there would be no sacrifice in the functionality or content. The new Carmex website’s mobile page speed increased by 148%!
By optimizing for mobile, the new website would be able to reach an even larger audience and drive even more engagement and conversion. This is a major factor missing in most manufacturing web design projects.
Using Modern Manufacturing Web Design to Create a Standout Website
The new website featured a completely new web design that focused on the user experience and promoting the brand’s most valuable products. We incorporated the Carmex style into a stunning new modern CPG web design that users would love.
It features classic brand colors and highlights product offerings with a modern content carousel layout. A clear main menu is pinned at the top of the page with various topics that may interest site visitors. Upon hovering on menu options a drop-down menu appears with further subcategories. A small sub-menu rests above the pinned main menu with contact options, FAQs, international info, and language options.
The new Carmex website features modern manufacturing web design features and content that supports its image as a family-owned brand. Strategic use of the brand colors helps draw user attention to highlighted information or CTAs.
For example, on the home page, a bright red Shop Now button is pinned to the lower left corner of the screen. And on the history page, red typography for the timeline events showcase the legacy of an established brand. At the bottom of the page, a bright red button reading “Sign Me Up” pushes users to join the Carmex newsletter.
In addition, our team implemented language translators so that audiences around the world would be able to experience their new CPG web design.
SEO
Building SEO with an Integrated Web Strategy for the New CPG Website
With all our custom web design websites our team ensures that the client’s new website will meet best SEO practices. We research the most valuable keywords for our clients and evaluate what keywords are currently ranking. Once we’ve identified tangible SEO opportunities, our team uses these phrases both technically and organically across the website content.
We make sure that the website’s meta tags, titles, alt tags, and more align with their SEO priority keywords. Across distinct pages, our team targets specific phrases to help improve those page rankings.
While CPG brands do not focus on SEO as much as other industries, it is still an important element of a website quality score and will help drive more traffic to the website.
Analysis Reports
Providing Monthly In-Depth Analysis to Assist Brand Managers
The final piece of brand manager support that we provided was in the form of monthly in-depth analysis reports. These deep-dive reports help brand managers determine where there are opportunities for improvement, and where the website is succeeding.
Essentially, these provide a high-level analysis that’s broken down into an easily understandable report that can be presented to the executive or leadership team to help them better understand overall website performance from audiences, onsite behavior, new user acquisition, and more!
Website Support
Providing Continued Website Support with Brand Managers
As part of this redesign project, we worked with the Carmex team to educate them on using the new website now that its management had been simplified. With the new backend the Carmex brand manager support team would be able to make edits and updates as needed, something they hadn’t been able to do previously. The team was more firmly in control of their website and when they needed assistance or experienced issues they now had an expert web design team they could rely on for ongoing website support and maintenance.
As an Idea client Carmex has direct access to our exceptional customer support manager Haley Langer. She is always happy to answer any questions or concerns that arise. When Haley is not addressing our client’s needs she works diligently to review the site, offer suggestions and create training videos to help Carmex better manage its website. Our dedication to supporting our clients keeps them confident in managing their sites and less reliant on third-party support.
