JMG Group · Case study
Rebuilding our own website into a working platform.
JMGGroup.ca had grown over many years into a site that no longer matched how we actually work. We rebuilt it from the ground up — brand, structure, content and technology — so the site behaves like a product: clear to navigate, easy to publish to, and built to keep growing.
Before and after
The challenge
The old site no longer matched the business.
The earlier site represented a digital marketing and SEO consultancy well. That was an accurate picture for a long time — but the work had moved on, and the site had not moved with it.
- Brand and messaging were still rooted heavily in traditional digital marketing.
- The visual language did not communicate product architecture or systems thinking.
- Service presentation followed a conventional agency format.
- Newer capabilities — AI-assisted development, automation, platforms, integrated systems — were under-represented.
- Navigation and content structure did not support growth into projects, insights and case studies.
- The website needed to feel like the kind of product JMG Group now builds for others.
Experience since 2001
The foundation did not change.
JMG Group’s foundation still comes from more than two decades of websites, search, digital marketing, lead generation and publishing — including long-running regional projects such as KWRestaurants.com and competitive organic search campaigns across service industries.
- Digital work since 2001
- Web design and site architecture
- Search engine optimization
- Competitive organic search campaigns
- Digital publishing
- Lead generation and paid advertising
- KWRestaurants.com and regional platforms
- Platform development
The tools changed. The underlying fundamentals did not.
The last three years
The biggest shift happened recently.
Most of the capability expansion behind this redesign happened in roughly the last three years. AI-assisted workflows compressed the distance between an idea, a working prototype and a validated system — which changed what a small, senior team can realistically build and maintain.
- AI-assisted development workflows
- Faster product iteration
- Application and PWA development
- Automation across content and operations
- Stronger information architecture
- More sophisticated technical SEO
- Structured content systems
- Marketplace and platform design
- Database-backed applications
- Modern QA and validation workflows
AI increased execution capacity. Experience still guides the decisions — what to build, what to leave out, and what a system needs to survive its second year.
Design objective
Make the site feel like the work.
The redesign deliberately moved away from a conventional marketing-agency aesthetic. The brief was systems-oriented, architectural and editorial: premium and restrained, technical without feeling cold.
- Deep ink and navy surfaces
- Teal signal accent used sparingly
- Blueprint and grid language
- Animated system diagrams
- Stronger display typography
- Improved visual hierarchy
- Intentional light and dark alternation
- Simplified brand system and system mark
User experience
A clearer path through the business.
Every section now has a defined job, and each page ends by pointing somewhere useful rather than dead-ending.
- Clearer primary navigation with active-state indicators
- A stronger Work section with real case studies
- A more defined Services page and dedicated service detail pages
- Better About storytelling, including the founder and published work
- An Insights structure ready for ongoing publishing
- An improved Contact experience with validation
- Mobile navigation and comfortable touch targets
- Stronger closing CTA sections on every page
- Breadcrumbs across interior pages
- A restructured footer with direct contact details
- Privacy and Terms pages
- HTML sitemap and XML sitemap
SEO and architecture
Built to grow without becoming fragmented.
The site is structured so that adding a service, a project or an article does not require rebuilding navigation, sitemaps or metadata by hand. One source of truth feeds the HTML sitemap, the XML sitemap and internal links.
- Clearer page hierarchy and semantic routes
- Canonical handling on every indexable page
- Per-page titles, descriptions and Open Graph metadata
- Structured data, including breadcrumbs
- HTML sitemap at /sitemap
- Dynamically generated XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml
- robots.txt referencing the sitemap
- Internal linking between services, work and insights
- Architecture ready for future posts, case studies and services
Ranking outcomes are intentionally not claimed here. The work documented above is architectural.
Brand system
A visual system for a systems company.
The identity was simplified around one idea: interconnected parts held inside a defined frame. The mark reads as a node inside a system, and the same geometry carries through the diagrams, grids and iconography.
System markBefore / after
What actually changed.
| Category | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning | Digital marketing and SEO-led positioning | Integrated digital systems, product architecture and growth |
| Visual language | Traditional marketing-oriented hero | Schematic, systems-led visual identity |
| Information architecture | More conventional site structure | Services, Work, About, Insights and scalable supporting content |
| Technical foundation | Conventional website | Modern application / PWA-oriented architecture built to expand |
| Content strategy | Portfolio and promotional content | Case studies, insights and structured, scalable publishing |
What we learned
The same rule applies to our own site.
A website should not be preserved simply because it still works. When the business, the audience or the capabilities change, the digital system around them should change too.
- Clarity over novelty
- Architecture before decoration
- User experience before internal preferences
- Systems over disconnected tools
- Continuous improvement rather than one-time redesigns
Current status
Still evolving.
The new site is a working system, not a finished artefact. As JMG Group adds projects, insights, services and new capabilities, the architecture is designed to evolve with them rather than requiring another complete rebuild.
Related: Services · About JMG Group · All work
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