Our History

In 2012, Orbit continued the trend of steady growth. Key roles were added, including our fearless leader and CEO, Todd Gettelfinger. Yes, Orbit officially has adult supervision. But really, Todd had been helping Orbit since 2008.

The projects in 2012 were slightly larger in scope than in previous years. We handled more projects requiring ecommerce integration, made responsive web design our standard approach to mobile sites, and launched several web-based startups. But the marketing website is still our bread and butter. In total, we launched 55 websites.

It was an eventful year for marketing. We have so much information and advice to share that we doubled the frequency of our newsletter to bi-weekly. We continued to host Wine and Web in 2012 and created a new event for teaching content marketing, Content Jam. Other news: we narrowly averted being on a reality TV show (for the best, I'm sure) and our website was plagiarized (not so great). Also, as Chicago hosted the 2012 NATO Summit, Orbit designed and hosted the NATO Summit website.

It was a good year for awards. We earned the W3 Design Award, ICIC's Inner City 100 announced by Fortune Magazine, 18th Annual Communicator Award for excellence in design and visual communication, and the 2012 Web Hosting Award. We also achieved Certified B-Corp status by demonstrating sustainable business practices. We are very proud of this and we're only the 16th company in Illinois to do so.

But our greatest achievements can be found in the faces of our clients and the Analytics of their websites. After 11 years, the goal hasn't changed one bit: do great work for people you love.

On May 4th 2012 we mourned the loss of John Cooney. John was the leader of the technical team. He was also a mentor and a friend. We miss him daily and are continually grateful for every moment we had with him.

What's next?

To help our clients capture the opportunities of content marketing, we'll continue to stay ahead of the curve. We'll respond to what's possible with what's practical - always keeping an eye on the end results.

And just as important, we'll never stop emphasizing the development of our team. As we create new opportunities to work together and improve, our environment will stay both challenging and fun. Experience has shown that this translates into happy clients. We care about each other, our clients and making every project we touch, the best it can possibly be.