Web Design Portfolio & Case Studies

Non-Profit Homeless Outreach Website

Project type:  Custom Web Design & Consulting

Content Management System: Wordpress 

Solutions Provided: Custom Wordpress theme design, content migration, search engine optimization, consulting

Link to this case study: Non-profit web design using Wordpress

Launch date: October, 2011

Donations are the life-blood of a non-profit organization. Making the ability to donate extremely simple and easy to access may be the most important goal we've achieved in this web design project; Empowering our clients to reach goals and meet needs is why we love what we do.

Organization's needs and specific requests:

1. Prominent ability to donate and give throughout the website
2. Website design that was updated to match re-branding
3. Clean design that conveys the heart and soul of the organization's purpose (Caring for homeless and under-employed people)
4. Highlight the success stories of those they have assisted
5. Easy to use blogging capabilities and ability for staff to easily update articles
6. Ability to be found in search engines (Search Engine Optimization)
7. Social media integration

1. We designed our cleint's Wordpress theme to keep the ability to donate in front of viewers on every page of the website. The main page contains the largest "Donate" call to action, while all internal pages of the site load a smaller call to action above the fold.
2. Our client was in the process of completely re-branding their organization when they contacted us. They had a fresh new logo that stood in stark contrast to their old logo and brand colors. We used their logo as a basis for the color palette, but gained the most inspiration from listening to our client's talk about what they do.
3. Listening to our clients spawned ideas for some of the beautiful imagery that is showcased on the new website. They had many beautiful photos that showed them in day-to-day activities which really conveyed how much they care and love what they do.
   
   These images were incorporated into the design and a large slideshow was created for the homepage to showcase their message simply: Who we help, What we do and How you can help.
4. Over the years, our client's had helped many, many people get on their feet and they had some wonderful success stories from people that they wanted to really highlight on the website. Using these stories also helps to propel their message to potential donors. So we created a special area just for the stories of those who they have helped, which is featured on the front page and easily accessed from elsewhere in the site.
5. Wordpress is THE blogging platform. Knowing how important ease of content generation is to our clients, made Wordpress an easy choice for their website's platform. Because Wordpress is an opensource, free distribution software we were also to keep development costs down - which is always important

6. Once the site was close to launch, we incorporated and configured SEO plugins which make the already search engine friendly Wordpress platform a search engine magnet. We created unique titles and descriptions for initial pages. We added an xml sitemap and configured URL structures to be as easy as possible for search engines to make sense of.
7. We made sure that being able to connect with our clients so that they could further the conversation with donors was as easy as possible. On all pages, there are links to follow and connect as well as share content. In addition, an email newsletter signup is front and center on all pages of the website, which means our client is able to leverage all types of media to inform and connect with donors and potential donors.

via LinkedIn “Samara's work is exceptionally high quality and she is wonderful to work with. She was both expert and patient, and could talk IT language as well as nonprofit language! The end result was a truly wonderful website. I enjoyed working with Samara and would not hesitate to recommend [PIXSYM] to anyone.” - Joy Eckstine, Executive Director - Bridge House