How we breathed life into a 30-year old brand

The Challenge

The right image for a technology leader

Ever wonder who’s responsible for the barcode on shoe boxes? Food packaging? Prescription bottles? Insert a long list of products here. More likely than not, Seagull Scientific’s BarTender software played a role in making that label, barcode or RFID tag stuck to the side of any (or all) of those items in your mind’s eye.

In the label creation software market, there are only a handful of major players in the world. And for over 30 years, Seagull Scientific has been one of the players. But looking at their website, you would have guessed it hadn’t been updated in 30 years. Dated graphics. Walls of text. Confusing navigation. It was time for a makeover. And they knew it.

So Seagull Scientific asked us to refresh their website. Reposition their brand. Reclaim their status as an industry leader. And demonstrate they are the ideal choice to serve enterprise clients.

Right in our wheelhouse.

Our Approach

A very visual story

We cracked our knuckles and launched into our discovery phase. This always starts with in-depth interviews and digging into the brand history. And being Bonsai, we devoted a lot of energy, poring through analytics and search traffic data.

All evidence pointed to the fact that the world was very familiar with BarTender Software, the name of their sole product. In fact, 89 percent of their branded search traffic came from “BarTender Software,” not “Seagull Scientific.” We decided to re-brand the company and the official URL.

Another obvious choice was to visually tell their story. So our site design called for modern imagery and an animated video explaining their process, along with other scrolling animations. Our idea was to communicate BarTender’s features and benefits, but in a more contemporary, engaging and approachable way.