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PROJECT INSIGHT 1/5
What a saga! This website design has been four years in the making, but that's real life for in-house design teams. As Jason Fried of Basecamp says, the more important something is, the slower you should go. In this case, for a mid-size organization that relies on its online presence, a new website is incredibly important.
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PROJECT INSIGHT 2/5
The first step of the project was to brand the organization as a whole. There were three different logos, none of which having been officially approved by the executives, there were at least 15 different interpretations of what the organization's brand standards should be, and there was no vision or mission defined in any clear way.
I started by getting all the top decision-makers together in a room and used some excellent advice from the book "Sprint", along with my own experience with other clients, we hammered out all the input needed to create a brand script. I compiled the brand script using the StoryBrand methodology then condensed that down into a vision statement.
Using the brand script, I worked with the in-house design team to design a new brand standards guide. Concurrently I met with each department to narrow down and clarify the organization's offerings and messaging which, in turn, gave me the information I needed to develop the information architecture.
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PROJECT INSIGHT 3/5
The complexity of the organization is mind-boggling to employees and donors alike (it's a non-profit organization), and we agonized over whether to unify the offerings or split them out into disparate micro-sites. After consulting with my good friend and designer, Brad Bonham, we decided to do a mixed model of micro-sites inside one single website, effectively creating a web app that contains all the organization's offerings, delivering what new users need, along with equipping the current client base to continue to the next step.
We were able to condense all the offerings down into 5 core opportunities, each of which received its own section of the website, each with its own branding, sitting inside the parent brand & UI language.
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PROJECT INSIGHT 4/5
It was important to me that the website communicate lots of information quickly, that it guide users to decisions smoothly, and that it be beautiful. We gathered photos that showed success for our target audience (instead of choosing self-aggrandizing photos), and worked on attractive color combinations to bring visual fun to the site.
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PROJECT INSIGHT 5/5
I'm thrilled to say that the new website has been a resounding success! The staff, donors, and customers have all reported that they find the new easy to use, informative, and it has served to invigorate the user base and bring an injection of excitement across the organization. As part of the release of a new vision statement, logo, and marketing strategy, Global Awakening has been positioned for sustainable growth for the future.
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