Power of community
AccessOC coordinates free speciality medical care and surgeries for low income patients in Orange County who have little or no insurance. They had an old website that was hard to navigate and needed a fresh look.
The first step in the process was understanding the mission and impact of the organization, and how they plan to use their website. While the request was just for an "updated look", I still did a series of stakeholder interviews to understand the organization and its impact. Through these conversations, it was clear that the site needed to accomplish several key goals:
- Communicates their mission
- Does effective volunteer outreach to medical professionals
- Gives a clear indication of organization impact for potential volunteers and donors/funders
- Makes it easy for volunteers to submit applications
- Accepts donations
- Conveys trust and professionalism
The process of having the stakeholder conversations made the objectives of the site more concrete and clear to the organization itself. They now had a way to not just point to the site, but also evaluate if the site was achieving its goals.
Content Inventory
I followed up on the stakeholder interviews with a complete content inventory of the old site.
A visual sitemap
Several issues were identified during the content inventory - most of the key content on the organization's impact was hidden in deeply linked internal pages. Some key information pointed to old, outdated and incorrect information. These issues were made clear when it was brought together into a visual color-coded sitemap.
Focus on the stories
After the content evaluation it became clear that the content of the site needed a redesign. Given the focus on the attracting and recruiting volunteers, I proposed a design that brings the patient stories to the forefront. This will help make an emotional connection to the visitor and clearly show the organization's impact.
Story first
I worked on not just the layout and visuals, but also on how to write the content to highlight the incredible impact the organization was making - starting with the patient stories and continuing to establish context by bringing the real, compelling data to the forefront.
The redesign flattened the sitemap, added blogs for community stories and events and presented the calls to action in the context of telling the story of AccessOC and the community around it.
Final steps in the design, included migrating colors to match the existing branding, designing all the subpages, implementing the site on Squarespace and training AccessOC personnel to update content and styling on Squarespace.
The site now is much easier to keep up-to-date, has become an effective volunteer recruitment tool and presents a complete picture of the organization to visitors.
