A few months ago I wrote a manifesto. Said I was going to run 24 experiments on this website over the course of 2026 (roughly two per month, right?). In a crazy turn of events, I fell behind almost immediately. Who is shocked? No one.
However… this week I pushed through six at once.
Why?
I’ve spent a really long time trying to figure out how to stand out in a crowded market. We don’t really have an ideal client vertical. We build websites for landscapers and tech companies and supplement brands and law firms, and the only thing I can point to and say “this is what makes us different” is literally our website.
If my own site looks like every other agency’s site, the pitch falls apart.
So I’d better make it worth looking at.
What did I actually do?
One overhaul with six experiments inside of it:
- The aesthetic is now everywhere. The retro hero from Experiment #1 used to be stand alone (nothing else on the website looked like it). Now the same visual language carries through every page. No more design drift (…it’s nice following my own concepts).
- Coins and boxes to punch are scattered across the site. Look around. Tap on things. Some of them do something. The goal is to provide little areas of happiness.
- You can collect what you find. There’s an inventory and it saves. Now that it is built, there is a lot more I can do with this in the future.
- The collectibles have tiers. Find a special one and the site does a little dance. A little box pops up. Something animates. It actually feels like you found something.
- The inventory looks like an inventory. Old-school, pixelated. The kind of thing you (yes, you… the millennial+ reading this now) would recognize.
- You can save your progress. Type in your email and the things you’ve found follow you across devices. And no, this isn’t some gimmick to get your email address and spam you. It doesn’t go into an email system.
Experiment #7 is a mini-game. It’s almost done and I’ll drop it soon.
I owed you six experiments. Six just shipped. We’re square.
The deeper bet
I’m not building this because I think it’s going to convert leads directly. In fact, the whole concept of it flies in the face of some common UX principles which may hurt conversion.
I’m building this because I want to be memorable.
I want to give people a reason to click over from a LinkedIn post for thirty seconds and smile. Then click over again next week. I want to be the agency someone remembers six months later because something on the site made them grin.
I posted twice about the old retro-style banner section. Months after that post, I have had people ask me: “you’re the one with the video game header, right?” Yes, Bob, that is me. In fact, I was at lunch last week with a buddy I hadn’t talked to in months. Halfway through the conversation, he paused and asked me about it.
Making marketing fun
There’s another reason I’m doing this. I have ideas for marketing that I have never once been excited to actually do. I work with great people on this stuff and have lists of things I “should” be doing. But, I have never wanted to do any of it because it all feels like it is the same as what everyone else is doing.
Because the playground was boring.
When the playground is boring, you don’t want to play. You go through the motions. You post the thing because you “should.” It shows.
This whole project is me building myself a playground I actually want to spend time in. If the foundation is fun, the marketing on top of it is fun. And if the marketing is fun, I’ll actually do it. Consistently. Without faking enthusiasm.
That’s a different bet than “this’ll get me clients.” That’s “this’ll keep me in motion for the next decade.”
Slightly childish, on purpose
I’ve shown a preview of this to a handful of people, and these are the back-to-back responses I get from folks:
- “OK, this is awesome!! How did you come up with it?”
- “Do you think other people will like this, or do you think they will think it’s silly?”
Is it slightly childish? Yep. 100% it is.
But, I don’t care one iota. The goal is to be unique, memorable, and different. If the cost of getting there is “slightly childish,” that’s a price I’ll pay all day.
The agencies that look the most professional are also the most invisible. There are some fantastic agency websites out there. But if I were to ask you “what does XYZ’s website remind you of?” there is a good chance you won’t remember. I’m hoping you remember this one.
What’s next
Experiment #7 drops soon. After that, more.
Savannah Bananas playbook: always have something new ready to share. The backlog is full. I’m not spoiling it.
In the meantime, go poke around. Tap things. See what happens.
Let’s go.
