Time

Two Weeks

Project Type

Client

Our Client

Initial Thoughts

When we were introduced to the client, it was clear that their site had a lot of room for improvement: there were way too many pages, repetitive pages, and too many clicks to accomplish simple tasks like making a donation or signing up to be a volunteer. Before we got ahead of ourselves, our team met with CASA staff members to see what their goals were for the website.

Client Goals

Sitting down with the Advocates for Children - CASA we were able to come up with their team’s goals for the website:

Problem

Advocates for Children’s current site does not communicate the passion behind the organization and is hard to navigate.

Solution

Create a live Wordpress website to increase engagement with current members as well as potential donors and volunteers, and can be delivered and managed by CASA upon completion.

Working for a nonprofit without a Dev Team, we knew that if our final deliverable was a Sketch file or inVision prototype, they wouldn’t be able to easily integrate this changes so our team decided to create a Wordpress site using a Divi plugin that the Advocates for Children - CASA team would be able to easily manage.

Research

Competitive Analysis

Our team wanted to see what other organizations  were doing and how they were successful. Some of our takeaways of ideas other sites were doing well include:

• Donate & volunteer  buttons in the “F-pattern”

• Multiple calls to action on each screen

• Highlight tax credits in more obvious location

• Build empathy & trust through emotion/ storytelling

• Bright call to action colors

• Pop up featuring news and event information

• Simplified menus

Surveys

I created two Google Surveys to get some insight from current CASA volunteers as well as volunteers who started the volunteer training but dropped out before completing it. I was especially interested in why the second group wasn’t able to complete the training. Did they not know what the commitment was like before signing up? Was there more information the website could provide ahead of time to prevent “volunteer dropouts”?

Interviews

For interviews, we were able to visit Advocates for Children - CASA in Aurora and interview three current volunteers. I conducted two of the interviews while my peers conducted the third. This was a wonderful opportunity to hear more of the heart and passion behind the volunteers that truly make up this organization.

The volunteers shared with us:

• How they decided to get involved with CASA

• Stories of the impacts the youth they serve had had on them

• Ideas for the website including being easier to navigate, more inspiring stories, and more about the wonderful staff that work at Advocates for Children - CASA

Information Architecture

Original:

Updated:

Sharing the Impact

One of the our hypotheses that was confirmed by our research is that for people to get involved, they want to really feel the impact that an organization is having. We focused on incorporating this need for emotion and passion by:

1. Sharing the stories of current Advocates for Children - CASA Volunteers

2. Videos on the site

3. Clearly laying out who Advocates for Children are and the different avenues to help them

The new volunteer page is a great example of this - before you only got an understanding of one way to volunteer, now you can see why people volunteer, how they started, different ways to volunteer, and more.

Live site!