Responses by Cocota.

Background: After seven years of growing as a studio, as people and as designers, we felt we needed a new website that reflected our vision, personality and current capabilities. We started the journey by conducting a self-awareness project, defining our brand strategy and platform and shaping our content strategy to tell the story of who we are. We needed to reflect our essence, which mainly speaks two languages: creativity and business.

Our audience are chief executive officers of small- and medium-sized enterprises looking to elevate their brand or better connect with their users, marketing and communications directors of large companies, and talented designers from all over the world with whom we would like to work. Our personality speaks of conceptualization and aesthetic quality but also of inclusiveness, diversity, globality, efficiency and friendliness. Finding the right balance to communicate all these factors was the biggest challenge.

Favorite details: We’re particularly proud of how our team members are brought front and center on the website as real people, inviting visitors to get to know us a little better. Through personalized thumbnails and messages from each team member, we aimed to create a welcoming first impression. For us, human connection is essential; even if we never have the chance to speak directly, we hope that visitors leave with a sense of who we are beyond our work.

Another point of pride is the balance we’ve struck between clean, impactful design and playful, memorable details. Our homepage captures this well: it’s a snapshot of who we are, showing off our mix of simplicity with moments that surprise and engage—like our interactive award section, where users can “play” with trophies, or the emojis that highlight our project concepts.

Functionality and clarity were equally important. We put extra thought into pages like Services, streamlining them to be more visual and approachable, and designed user-friendly contact forms that make contacting us simple—or at least more dynamic. Like any modern website, ours is a work in progress, and we look forward to adapting it with fresh insights as we continue to evolve.

Challenges: We like to aim high, and being our own website, we were looking for excellence. In terms of design, one of the biggest challenges was the creation of the team sprites. We spent many hours taking the photos, editing them and creating the animations; however, they were a key point to communicate the importance of the team at Cocota in an elegant, fun way.

In terms of developing, one of the most challenging aspects was ensuring a smooth, engaging user experience across all devices. Since the studio aims to convey creativity and modernity, it was crucial for the design to be visually striking yet intuitive. Additionally, optimizing site performance without compromising visual quality was a challenge. We focused on implementing lazy loading techniques and image optimization, which not only improved loading speed but also maintained the integrity of the design. Finally, integrating a content management system that allowed the team to update the site efficiently was key.

Technology: We used VS Code, WordPress with a custom headless theme, HTML5, CSS and vanilla JavaScript. We also implemented GSAP for some animations.