“We want to help our clients be catalysts that change the world.”
When Stephanie M. Casey first started building websites for herself, she quickly grew comfortable working on Wix. Barely a decade later, Casey is now the founder and CEO of her own web design agency, Lovage Inc.
Casey’s team is powered by 6 multi-skilled artists, designers and developers with the majority of the team working in an office in downtown Dallas, Texas. Although today they’ve been working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Casey and her team focus on comprehensive projects that help established businesses achieve their goals. As an agency, their mission is to create immersive website experiences. She believes her client relationships need to feel like partnerships. In order to achieve this, she learns what her clients do, researches their competitors and thinks about their future goals.
“To make a professional website for a well-established company, you have to get into their business.”
The beginning of their agency
Before Casey started Lovage Inc., her career covered a lot of ground—literally and figuratively. She spent 15 years working in entertainment and media on both coasts, in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon which included a decade working in Hollywood in the Editorial department on major studio films. For her next adventure—as an indie recording artist, Casey produced 2 original records which she toured the USA with under the moniker, Fall of Snow.
When she moved back to her hometown in 2009, Casey did various consulting jobs that utilized her creative production skills. She worked as the Producer for Neiman Marcus Online Creative, logged stints as a fashion and food blogger and produced events and photoshoots.
Eventually, she was set on to build her own business—one that leveraged her experience by offering companies general marketing services. At first, those services covered everything from identity branding to designing original artwork for commercial campaigns. But as work progressed, she and her team decided to hone in on website production as the agency’s core offering because she found, “Everybody needs a new website and we must do the deep branding work in order to make them a great one.”
“We use Wix because of the flexibility, design and usability. There's the ease of use without being developer dependent.”
Growing their client base with the Wix Marketplace
As an active Wix Partner, Lovage Inc. grows their client base in the Wix Marketplace, where Wix users can hire her to design, develop or market their websites.
Here’s a breakdown of the top 3 benefits she experiences from being a Partner in the Wix Marketplace:
1. Qualified leads
Today, Lovage Inc. generates 50% of their leads from the Wix Marketplace. “It’s a great resource,” Casey said. In her view, the automated lead-generation delivers consistent results. “Other funnels are much more competitive and broad, like Google or Facebook. Wix is very specific. You have people who are already users and have been pre-qualified.”
Once she’s been matched with new leads, Casey sends automated emails which helps her further filter out clients according to their budget and intent. With the right filters and automated emails, Lovage Inc. is able to save time and money. “The automated response is really helpful in letting the proper clients filter to the top,” Casey said.
“The Marketplace is a tool that directly connects us to leads. It’s a great resource.”
2. Useful flexibility
Casey ensures her agency receives a steady workflow with Marketplace filters that are easy to adjust. “If there’s ever a lull, I can always reset my automation to offer lower prices for a couple of weeks,” she said. With the Marketplace’s intuitive dashboard and automations, Casey tracks, manages and filters her leads and streamlines her work process.
3. Confidence and stability
Casey finds herself impressed with the support she gets from Wix. With her dedicated account manager, she knows there’s always somebody to trust. “At Wix I have an inside line—I can call my account manager if I really need something,” Casey said.
During COVID-19, Lovage Inc. relies on the Marketplace to generate leads during a time of uncertainty. “It’s helped maintain stability since there are still people needing our services,” Casey said. She believes having an online presence is extremely valuable now more than ever and the Marketplace has helped her agency tap into that opportunity.
Delivering their best results
As they’ve grown over time, Lovage Inc. has broadened the scope of what they deliver to clients. About 6 months ago, they took on a major project for Choreografx, a New York City-based production company that offers mind-blowing video projection-mapping for major companies.
Choreografx came to Lovage Inc. to launch a new offering—a studio space for clients to shoot their own projection-oriented projects. The goal of the project was to attract new clients for Choreografx and to create an impactful online representation of their company. At the project’s inception, the artists behind Choreografx had a portfolio website on WordPress that wasn’t meeting their needs. The site was challenging for them to build and lacked dynamism. “I knew that we would be able to make a really neat website for them,” Casey said.
“Great engineering isn’t when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing to take away.’”
With that in mind, the Lovage Inc. team went to work. When building Choreografx’s site, Casey was presented with a challenge: Equally marketing 2 large offerings with 1 website. In order to package both offerings, Lovage Inc. built a homepage that brings Choreografx’s immersive projection and studio products together. Their goal was to create something interactive that, even on a flat screen, could convey the distinct and often immersive qualities of the Cinegrafx product. Using Post-It notes to manually layout the site’s architecture, Casey and her team were able to construct a user experience that carved distinct spaces for both the projection mapping and the studio. To further showcase the product, Lovage Inc. built a teaser that could jump directly to the company’s portfolio.
The design and development unit managed to pull it all off—with minimal custom coding. Casey wanted to create a website that was advanced but also intuitive for the audience. “One of the quotes I love to say is, ‘Great engineering isn’t when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing to take away,’” she said. Casey believes it’s important to get to the meat of what her clients are offering with obvious navigation and clear messaging.
“Wix has a plethora of options that we can choose from.”
For additional effects, the project leader explored and experimented with other existing tools, making modifications as necessary. The majority of the site’s features and functions were built with apps offered by Wix. “Wix has a plethora of options that we can choose from,” Casey said. One example of a tool they used is the Wix Blog. They generated a customized blog and used it for their teaser.
Throughout the work process, Lovage Inc. and Choreografx stayed in contact making fast edits and updates. The entire ambitious project was finished in 3 months. Choreografx’s co-founder and managing partner, William Neal was ecstatic with the results. “I’m blown away by the site…it almost makes me want to cry,” Neal said.
With client projects like these, Casey enjoys creating a seamless handover process. She said she loves that Wix can be used at every level of expertise. “We can get very complex with it as experts and still have areas where it’s still very simple for the client to do updates on their own,” she said.
“I want to be supporting those types of industries, which are the disruptors and innovators.”
Making a difference
Moving forward, Casey is currently working on her new focused messaging for Lovage Inc. which is to support “Be the Change” efforts. “ This focus is dedicated to creating websites for businesses in order to make a difference. Whether it’s science, education, arts or communications, Casey wants to help changemakers achieve their goals. “I want to be supporting businesses which are disruptors and innovators,” she said. “Those coming up with a better way to do things.”