Whether you’re looking for a trustworthy digital marketing agency in Atlanta, or looking for inspiration for your own site: These are a great place to start.
So, in no particular order, here are some of our favorite websites, for companies ranking highest in organic search for “atlanta digital marketing agency.”
Located right in Inman Park, FortyFour has one of our favorite local agency websites.
Right off the bat, you’ll notice their site is super sleek. The design is not overwhelming; they’re not throwing loud colors or huge CTAs in your face.
Even the animations scream “subtle but effective” as you scroll through.
That’s a great sign. Many people, when building a new site, have prejudices against pages that “feel too long.” But many users love scrolling, especially on pages that offer a more high-level view of your organization.
So to give those users a pleasant, almost soothing scrolling experience means taking this theory to the next level: Take a user already open to scrolling, and make them want to keep scrolling.
Additionally, many of their pages take traditional layouts and turn them on their heads a bit. On their homepage, they’re not afraid to think more horizontally instead of stacking every single thing vertically.
Case studies are inviting and engaging without being overly word-heavy.
On their service pages, they give different elements and sections room to breathe. There’s a subtle difference between “some white space” and “big awkward gaps between content” and they’ve nailed it.
You’ll also notice that their imagery selections are thoughtful, clean and consistent. You won’t find weird stock images on their site.
Often, we see great elements like the ones mentioned above on a company’s desktop site, but then those elements don’t translate to mobile. Animations become annoying, horizontal layouts will cut off, whitespace means scrolling takes forever…
But not for FortyFour’s site! All of these things translate excellently and easily to mobile.
What does all this mean for FortyFour, and for you? It means that if you’re looking for an agency of people who intuitively understand UI/UX design, they seem like a great fit.
Swarm is another Atlanta agency with a clean site with pleasing animations and layouts (and a well-done, consistent color palette).
They have a few unique features on their site worth calling out.
The biggest one is their blog. First, they do a great job regularly updating it with new, fresh content.
That not only shows that they’re smart people with a lot to say. It also shows that they really mean what they say.
They’re not just sitting there telling you, “You should publish fresh content regularly on their site if you want to succeed.” They’re doing it themselves for their own enterprise, which means there’s a great chance they actually understand what it takes to do content marketing well.
The blog also features elements that speak to expertise in user experience design.
Each blog comes with an estimated reading time, encouraging you and other users to click and give each article a couple minutes.
And their blogroll has “load more” functionality, as opposed to traditional pagination.
This majorly benefits users and likely helps them stay on the blog for much longer, since they don’t have to wait for the blog homepage to reload every time they want to see the next few articles. And loading the next set of older articles doesn’t mean taking away the most recent ones.
Swarm displays their knowledge of UI/UX best practices in a few other ways as well.
The case study headlines on their “Work” page actually communicate the specific value their agency has provided to their clients, so you feel more enticed to click.
And it looks like every page on their site includes a CTA specially written to be specific to that page’s content. That means they’re not just thinking about what they need to write on that page to answer users’ questions — but also about what those users will want to see next.
All of this goes to show that Swarm not only understands how to design a pretty site, but how to identify user needs and then directly answer them.
Bearpaw is another agency whose website shows off their knowledge of user experience, as well as their eagerness to try out non-traditional approaches.
To start, their individual service pages feature slightly unexpected layouts: Like their email marketing page.
They’re not afraid to play with horizontal arrangements and overlapping elements. As a result, their pages feel new and fresh — not like the same old thing you’ve seen on every other marketing site.
You may have noticed their service pages also include another unexpected element: At the end of the page, before their contact CTA, Bearpaw provides an option to navigate directly to the next or previous service page.
This is useful for users who are looking for an overview of all the agency’s offerings, but who don’t want to navigate back to the services category page each time.
Additionally, Bearpaw’s main navigation features something you don’t typically see on agency websites: a “Stats” page.
It’s like a slightly different approach to a “Portfolio” or “Work” page. But instead of focusing on individual clients, they’ve chosen to zero in on their specific offerings (SEO, social, development, content) and the impressive metrics they’ve each accomplished.
The stats cover everything from follower growth and bounce rates to pieces of content written and number of projects completed without going over scope.
Judging from their site, Bearpaw is more than just an agency that uses cool fonts (though we are loving the use of Playfair Display) — They’re clearly open to challenge more traditional, and therefore potentially overused, website standards.
Hughes Media also does a good job on their website of trying out non-traditional techniques to serve a variety of user needs.
To start, there’s their newsletter signup. Tons of companies include a feature like this on their site, but the CTA is usually very general: “Sign up for our newsletter.”
Hughes, on the other hand, has a very specific offer for you: “Interested in a *FREE* Email Course On Marketing?”
This not only makes the offer inherently more enticing because they’re offering you something, it also makes you more likely to sign up because it’s an offer specifically targeted at their target audience: Other marketers — whether that’s other agencies or prospective clients.
Next, Hughes features a “reviews” page on their site. This is a cool move for a few reasons.
First, of course, they’re dedicating an entire page to proving their trustworthiness to users, using the words of real clients.
And second, they’re anticipating that some users may not just be looking for those “proof points” on their site, but may actually be using search engines to track down agency reviews.
There’s one more thing on this website that shows Hughes thinks differently about how websites can serve prospects: their “free photos” page.
Hughes isn’t just offering you blogs and case studies about marketing best practices.
They’re apparently so dedicated to your marketing success that they’ve effectively set up a mini version of a stock image website on their own company site.
Any marketer knows that finding good free stock photos is hard enough. Finding good free images not already plastered all over every website in the US? That’s a whole other challenge.
Thankfully, Hughes is here to help.
Cardinal has a special place in this article for a few reasons.
First, they have the highest domain authority score of anyone mentioned here at 34. Not bad for a website whose domain may only be 3 years old!
Second, in a similar vein, they are (as I write this) the agency local to ATL ranking the highest for “atlanta digital marketing agency” in organic search.
Then, there’s the actual site.
Upon landing on the homepage, you immediately notice the hero: Yes, it appears to use a stock image, but the messaging hits home: “CINDY’S PUMPED BECAUSE HER BOSS JUST FOUND OUT SHE DROVE A 116% INCREASE IN LEADS THIS MONTH.”
As does the accompanying CTA: “SEE HOW SHE DID IT.”
Business prospects and fellow marketing agencies alike can instantly relate to the hero. Immediately the user can tell that Cardinal knows what’s important to them.
In fact, they prove it in numerous places around the site, especially on their individual service pages (like this one about SEO).
They not only break out plenty of helpful info to explain each of their offerings (and win search for the associated terms), they also use data callouts to hit precisely on the value they’ve offered to other clients.
The “Who we help” section of their site has a similar effect, giving them an opportunity to speak directly to prospects and prove that they understand the unique pain points and vocabularies of a variety of industries.
Finally, Cardinal ensures that no matter where you are on the site, you can click on the “Get Started” button in their sticky nav — opening a popup contact form and enabling users to instantly convert, the moment they’re ready.
Cardinal, much like all the other companies in this article, appears to really understand user needs, as well as how to translate them into an effective website.
Are you looking for an Atlanta digital marketing agency to build your company’s website? Didn’t quite find what you were looking for on this list?
Brain Bytes Creative is an Atlanta-based digital marketing agency with an obsession for data-driven decisions, true partnerships, and constant self-improvement.
We love to learn and challenge ourselves. And we’d love to help you too. Want to talk? We’re ready when you are.
