My team and I redesigned the marketing website and branding for a homeless youth shelter. As a result, their volunteer and donor engagement shot up by 50%.
Team: Me (Design Lead), Fiona, Sai, Saumya, Yani (design +Â research), Christine (CMO)
Duration: 4 month Sprint
01
INTRODUCTION
Who is YouthCare?
Youthcare, a nonprofit founded in 1974, works to end youth homelessness by engaging volunteers, donors, and business sponsors. Over the years, it has expanded its efforts, educating and upskilling more than 1,800 homeless youth with the help of a community of 1,500 volunteers, partners, and employees.
Cause Supporters
People who support the cause out of goodwill. They actively browse opportunities and stay up-to date with compliance training.
Reputation Seekers
People who seek to help because of some materiliastic benifit. They actively look for proof of mutual benefit.
New Comers
Anyone curious about the brand and wants to explore the site. They are passive, but curious about Youth Homelessness.
UX Goals
- Refine the 30 page website.
- Provide a cohesive, true-to-brand experience.
- Align website to marketing goals.
Strategy Goals
- Increase organic website traffic by 30% through brand recall as a result of the luncheon event.
- Build trust and credibility in website messaging.
Growth Goals
- Recruit 1100 one-time donors and boost monthly donor sign-ups.
- Expand partnerships by 20%.
There was a huge contstraint: Limitations in manpower for updating and maintaining new content, compounded by constraints for implementation from the IT team.
03
FOR CAUSE SUPPORTERS
"I know the organization pretty well, I actually volunteer sometimes, because donating is very difficult. I usually love giving small gifts, but if not through the newsletter it is so difficult to keep track of what they want." - P5
Intervention: Content Audit
We conducted 3 interviews—each with a volunteer, donor, and beneficiary. Additionally, we organized a focus group with all 3.
100% of the cause supports do not care about the entire website, and 48% felt their decision making was stunted for the relavant pages.
Making the content and the structure of each page intentional was the key goal during this exercise. It would help people with directional motivation to get adequate information.
03
FOR REPUTATION SEEKERS
60% of traffic originates from Partner Websites but the information architecture does not help in finding information quickly to. It was important to make the information easy and quick to find. - Site Metrics Analysis
Intervention: Card Sort
We conducted 15 card sorting sessions with internal stakeholders. We also analyzed existing site metrics to ascertain common search queries.
Partners were 40% of donation efforts but were heavily sidelined in the user flows. For explorative users, it was time to fix the sitemap to make discoverability / findability easy.
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FOR NEW COMERS
"If I am exploring a cause I really want to help, and if I have heard of it before, I sometimes donate - otherwise it is very trust based for me." - M2
Intervention: Rebranding
66% of the donations are gut instict. When asked what they thought YouthCare represented, users were confounded. This exercise was conducted to help streamline communication and brand language.
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FINAL DELIVERABLES
Updated Layouts
We redefined the Sitemap / IA and built the layouts for the 30-page website.
Design System +Brand Language
YouthCare wanted to be youthful yet formal. They wanted to use bright colors and smooth borders and contrast. it with a formal typeface and, bordered components, etc.
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FINAL SCREENS
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FEEDBACK AND THOUGHTS
Christine, CMO Youthcare
They did a great job brining a youthful look to the website and brand messaging. We really appreciate the hands on experience they had with the project.
My Thoughts
Rapid iteration of your wireframes and brainstorming ideas is humbling.
I learned the importance of effective communication and collaboration for a project's success.
