Building Connections
Wilder wanted a site which better reflected its core mission and inspire its audience to get involved. To achieve these goals, we focused on several areas.
- Pages lead with images of the people Wilder serves, putting more of a human face to the cause.
- A short and concise mission statement immediately leads to a call to action — “find help” or discover “our impact” on the community. We wanted to quickly serve those in need, while telling the story of why Wilder mattered. “Why Wilder” is another callout on the page, featuring relevant facts about the organization and leading to a new page about “Community Impact.”
- Featured blocks of related content used throughout the site invite users to explore and learn more about the ways Wilder impacts the community. Highlighting research papers, blog posts, news and events also demonstrates impact.
- ”Courageous Stories” is a new section to highlight success stories from the clients Wilder serves, in a relatable, personable way.
- ”How to Help” is a call to action on every page, simplified down to two, easy-to-scan buttons and more imagery of the people Wilder serves.
Improved User Experience
Wilder is involved in so many different areas of the community, but learning more about their capabilities was buried under a confusing array of site navigation and content-heavy pages.
Our design and content strategy emphasized shorter sections of content, separated into clearly defined sections across each page. We encouraged Wilder to embrace the mobile experience of scrolling through content, and not separate content across so many different web pages. Related content is more easily found as callouts within a section or page of the site.
Our team spent a lot of time working with Wilder on a new and improved site navigation, looking for areas where language could be simplified for the general audience, and content could be grouped into fewer sections.
“What We Offer” was created to simplify and consolidate Wilder’s services in one area, which previously had been scattered under “Programs and Services” and "Community and Leadership." Within each service area, content was consolidated into a single, consistent layout, making certain any relevant content could be easily located.
Visual Improvements
Wilder had recently conducted a rebranding project, but had yet to implement any of the branding elements in their marketing. The website was the first use of the rebranding.
While the previous one used a variety of colors and fonts, the new site closely adheres to the brand standards in color use and choice of typefaces. A fun new part of the rebranding introduced new textures and secondary colors to Wilder, and our team incorporated these through the redesign.
The new design is clean and straightforward, around the core colors of white, blue and green. But it also introduces splashes of unexpected color, such as magenta around the “How to Help” section or gold around the “Why Wilder” callout. Strips of colors and textures add life and visual interest to various blocks and boxes throughout the site.
Overall, a larger, more legible font size was used throughout the site, and stronger typography for easier reading. Careful attention was paid to ensuring a proper level of color contrast wherever colors were used, making sure the design was accessible to all users.
Custom Data Integrations
One of Wilder’s core services is conducting research and evaluation studies for nonprofits and communities throughout Minnesota.
Wilder manages their research findings through a third-party system called Presto from InMagic. Data includes the client organization, project type, taxonomy terms, report data and accompanying documents.
Our team created an automated, recurring migration program to pull data into the site from Presto, and map content to various blocks, pages, and terms where it is used throughout the website. Each night, the website queries the Presto data and pulls in any new items, or updates to existing data.
Wilder can now feature the content in a new “Research Library,” housing years of research into topics such as homelessness, immigration, and health. We were able to build a sortable online library for over 1,000 research reports, and share Wilder’s valuable research with the greater public.
Content includes report documents, infographics, survey instruments and more, written and produced by multiple authors and research studies.
