Encircle: A brand refresh and website redesign for restoration software

Project background

Encircle is a software company based in Kitchener, Ontario, that helps restoration contractors manage their projects, teams, and documentation. Built for the people doing the work in the field, Encircle’s platform makes complex restoration processes simpler, faster, and easier to manage.

As Encircle continued to grow, they recognized that both their website and brand needed to evolve. They came to Stryve looking to relaunch their website while also refreshing and formalizing their visual identity. The goal was to create a more modern, human, and cohesive brand that better reflected the value of their product and could be applied consistently across their digital and marketing touchpoints.

The mission

Encircle wanted to modernize how the brand showed up without losing the practical, human qualities that mattered to their audience. Their customers are restoration contractors working under high pressure—often in the field—so the brand needed to feel clear, trustworthy, and approachable rather than overly technical or polished.

The mission was to:

• Evolve the brand so Encircle could stand out from competitors
• Bring more humanity, emotion, and community into the visual identity
• Create a clear design system that would prevent brand drift
• Improve the usability and consistency of the website experience
• Give Encircle’s internal team practical tools and guidelines they could use across future marketing and digital work

The website and brand refresh were developed together, with the new site serving as one of the largest and most visible applications of the refreshed brand system.

Discovery & alignment

We started by getting aligned on where Encircle was today, where they wanted to go, and what their audience needed from the brand and website. We looked at Encircle’s existing brand, website, messaging, competitors, and customer journey to identify opportunities to create a stronger and more differentiated experience.

They wanted to feel more modern, but not cold, overly technical, or corporate. Their audience is made up of largely tradespeople, so they needed to find that balance between the typical software approach and bringing that more practical, down-to-earth feel. Their marketing team also needed to respond quickly to the growth in the product, and so a modern and flexible website back-end was critically important. These insights gave us a clear direction for both the website experience and the visual evolution of the brand.

Site architecture & wireframing

With the strategic direction established, we focused on creating a website experience that made Encircle’s products, value, and customer success easier to understand and explore. We reviewed the existing site structure and content, identified opportunities to improve navigation and discovery, and created a more flexible architecture.

We took a modular approach to the experience. We wireframed a library of flexible modules and templates that could be combined and reused across the site, giving Encircle a consistent foundation that’s flexible. Where needed, different variations were built so that sections could be used across different pages without feeling too similar.

This also gave the Encircle team guidance when planning the content for the new website’s pages. They used the library to choose what modules would best highlight what they were trying to say on each page. Product marketing managers and designers knew well in advance what copy to write and images to design that would call out what’s important and fit within the new site’s framework.

Part of the planning process involved untangling Encircle’s existing digital ecosystem. The website had grown across multiple domains and subdomains, making the experience harder to manage and creating unnecessary complexity for both users and the internal team. We mapped the existing structure, identified what needed to be consolidated, and built a simpler architecture into the new site plan. This gave Encircle a cleaner foundation for the website.

Website design: the first frontier of an evolving brand

Through the lens of the website’s user experience, we refined how colour, typography, imagery, iconography, and graphic elements were used across the brand. We introduced a new accent colour, expanded the typography system, developed new iconography, and incorporated subtle textures and visual elements that added warmth and personality. Orange remained an important part of the brand, but was applied more intentionally to highlight benefits and key actions so that it no longer dominated the experience.

The result is a brand that feels more approachable, confident, and distinctive while staying true to Encircle’s identity.

“The consensus is that everyone loves the direction Brent has gone with the brand and are very happy with what we are seeing from the modules.”
– Heather Hennessy, Chief Marketing Officer, Encircle

Formalizing the design system

A successful brand isn’t just defined by how it looks. It’s defined by how consistently it is applied over time.

As the website and brand refresh took shape, we worked to formalize the decisions being made into a clear and usable system. The goal was to give the Encircle team practical tools and guidance that would help them maintain consistency across future marketing, product, sales, and digital initiatives.

We documented standards for typography, colour usage, iconography, imagery, interactive elements, and UI components, creating a shared framework that could be referenced across teams. We also developed image templates, presentation templates, and updated brand guidelines to make day-to-day execution faster and more consistent.

Rather than relying on individual interpretation, Encircle now has a scalable system that provides clear guardrails while still allowing flexibility. This helps reduce brand drift, supports onboarding, and makes it easier to evolve the brand as the business continues to grow.

A faster WordPress back end and cleaner analytics

Encircle’s marketing team needed a back end that was easy to use. As a SaaS company, their marketing moves fast, and their website has to keep up with every campaign and piece of content they launch.

We built the site on WordPress Gutenberg and brought every module and variation, styled to Encircle’s updated brand, into the site as reusable patterns. Now the team can launch an on-brand webinar or product page in minutes.

We also performed a deep audit of Encircle’s website tags, choosing to start with a clean slate to replace years of outdated bloat. Customized metrics and tracking were configured so that ongoing website reporting would meet their specific needs. The conversion events were then also connected to Encircle’s multiple ad platforms (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Reddit) to ensure that the website was sending the right signals to their campaigns for optimization.

The impact

Encircle left the project with more than a refreshed brand and a new website. We gave their team the structure, tools, and confidence to take the brand forward independently.

Outside of the core deliverables, we helped Encircle:

• Simplify their digital ecosystem: Consolidated two CMS platforms into one WordPress site, saving more than $13,000 annually in software costs.
• Reduce digital complexity: Consolidated two domains and nine subdomains into a single domain.
• Give their team more autonomy: Created a flexible WordPress system with reusable patterns, clear guidelines, and templates for ongoing content and brand execution.

The result: a more modern and human brand, a stronger digital experience, and an empowered internal team with the foundation and autonomy to keep building from here.

“From design to web best practices to keeping everything on track, the Stryve team made a truly meaningful impact. We’re very grateful for the guidance, leadership, and talent that went into getting the site live. It’s been a pleasure working together, and we really appreciate the partnership.”
– Heather Hennessy, Chief Marketing Officer, Encircle