A Look Behind the Code: How We Built 417 Magazine's New Websites

In late 2016 we began a relationship with 417 Magazine with an end goal to overhaul every aspect of their websites for three separate magazines. Just over a year later, we were proud to launch a custom platform that manages all three publications in one place.

From the outside, the launch looked like a clean, modern redesign. Behind the scenes, it was the product of a close local partnership, a rebuilt discovery process, and a component-based engineering approach that had both teams working in lockstep to ship on a tight timeline.

A partnership forged in 417-land

We knew going into the relationship that our respective cultures were a good fit. We both like champagne, office parties, The Wheelhouse, and our respective orbits. The powerhouse digital team at 417—Dayle Duggins, JuliRose Sullivan, and Krysten Maloney—were dream partners when it came to using the tools we created to bring the new sites together.

What we didn't know was just how much we would uncover along the way—and how many challenges we would overcome together—to create a new, industry‑leading web presence. The result is a custom solution that manages more than 5,000 pages across three publications that reach tens of thousands of unique visitors every month.

Understanding audiences (by starting over)

Nearly every new relationship we dive into at Mostly Serious begins with something we call the Groundwork phase. It's our structured way to go beyond basic demographics and behaviors and uncover the hidden insights that should drive strategy, content, and UX decisions.

For 417, we ran our standard Groundwork playbook and quickly realized something wasn't clicking. We had data, interviews, and observations, but we didn't yet have the sharp, "aha"‑level insights we look for before making big product decisions—and 417's team felt the same way.

So we did something that's harder than it sounds: we started over. Not just with the activities inside Groundwork, but with the assumptions behind it. Instead of treating our discovery process as one‑size‑fits‑all, we rebuilt it specifically around 417's audiences, business model, and content ecosystem.

We dug deeply into their analytics in what we now call an Analytics Deep Dive—looking past surface‑level traffic metrics to understand how readers were actually using the sites. We layered on a detailed Click Audit of the existing information architecture to see where users were getting lost, which content clusters were over‑ or under‑performing, and how different sections related to each other.

From there, we surveyed dozens of readers to get personal answers to complicated questions and audited a set of national peer publications to establish a quality bar we wanted to surpass. Taken together, the work didn't just change the trajectory of the project; it exposed business opportunities for 417's internal teams that went beyond "just" a website redesign.

"Mostly Serious was crucial in helping us understand our digital audience and what they want from us."

— Logan Aguirre, President & Associate Publisher at 417 Magazine

Those insights also helped us refine our own modular process—our evolving system of movable pieces that make up each client relationship. By re‑thinking Groundwork for 417, we sharpened a discovery approach that would go on to benefit many future projects.

A unique collaboration

As we moved from insight into structure and design, our collaboration with 417 took on a different flavor than most projects. Through our Director of Design, Jessica Spencer—who previously served as 417 Magazine's Art Director—we had someone on our team who knew the organization from the inside.

With most clients, we have a point of contact who helps bridge the gap between organizations. With 417, we had the bridge sitting at our own whiteboard. That meant we could anticipate internal conversations, spot potential issues early, and move faster when it was time to make decisions about design and content.

"The 417 team were a dream to collaborate with. For the design process, we worked shoulder‑to‑shoulder with them to make big decisions on the site's organization and functionality. Our ultimate product is something that we all agreed was a home run for 417 readers, staffers, and 417's partnering advertisers—and was a true labor of love for both of our respective teams."

— Jessica Spencer, Director of Design at Mostly Serious

We sketched sitemaps on the whiteboard (and probably set an unofficial record for longest working session), reviewed wireframe after wireframe, and iterated on visual design until the sites felt both contemporary and true to the 417 brand. The goal was simple: build an experience that felt as polished as national publications while staying grounded in local storytelling.

Engineering a flexible platform

On many projects, once strategy and design are in place, our clients can step back while our engineering team brings everything to life. This project moved differently. The timeline was ambitious, the content volume was huge, and we knew we needed a way to keep design, development, and content moving together without burning anyone out.

Our solution was two‑fold. First, we broke pages down into reusable components—modular building blocks that could be combined to support each magazine's unique needs without reinventing the wheel every time. Second, we delivered those components in phases so the 417 digital team could start populating content while we were still coding.

While our engineer, Aimee Hendrycks, was busy programming the pieces and turning one of our conference rooms into a "417‑only" war room, the 417 digital team was in the new CMS, learning the tools, adding content, and giving feedback as they went.

We programmed. They populated. We coded. They wrote. We polished. They polished. On January 24, 2018, we were ready to launch the fully featured, newly imagined 417 Magazine websites—right on schedule.

The component‑based approach paid off long after launch, too. Because the platform was designed around flexible content blocks instead of one‑off templates, 417's team can continue evolving layouts, trying new editorial formats, and supporting advertisers without needing a full rebuild every time.

The importance of local partnerships

We're extremely proud of what we created with 417 Magazine. The design, content management system, and feature set continue to help us illustrate how we provide value for our clients—and how much better digital products can be when they're built around real audience insight instead of assumptions.

But the product itself isn't what we're most proud of. More than anything, we're proud of the partnership we built with a local company that's deeply respected in the community. Like our relationships with CoxHealth, Mother's Brewing Co., The Community Foundation of the Ozarks, and so many others, this project is a reminder that the best work happens when teams invest in each other for the long term.

For every new project we take on, our hope is to end up in a similar place: with a client who sees real value, readers who feel understood, and a digital solution that supports the business for years to come.