It all started with a big poster, lots of stickie notes, a few Polar Pops from the Circle K gas station, and some free time. We knew that our website catered to mainly two audiences – the patients and the donors – since we are a 501c3 non-profit health clinic. We knew that we would need to build the site with these people in mind. We started with the main navigation and home page of the new website. We researched other websites that we thought modeled the direction we wanted to go and started brainstorming and dreaming. This part of the process was super fun!
How did you determine what to keep and what to get rid of for the new site?
We looked at the Google Analytics data to help us determine what content or pages we needed to keep and what we needed to get rid of. We found that other than the home page – people visited the contact us page and the dental page the most. It was also interesting to find that people visited the provider pages. These pages offered additional bio information of each of our quality providers and it helped “humanize” them.
We knew that we didn’t need half the pages that we had because we had an outdated “in the news” section and a page serving as the archives of our printed donor newsletters. There was zero traffic to those pages so those were the first thing to go! No brainer!
How did you go about selecting a vendor to take over the project?
We only had two vendors in mind. One vendor was the one we currently were using based in Augusta, GA. They were hosting the website before and redesigned it from a basic html website we had in the 2000s. I was concerned as I really wanted the new website to be ADA compliant and bilingual, and I wasn’t sure they knew how important this was to us.
Storey Creative came up because a coworker knew Astrid and worked with her on several projects. She spoke very highly of her. “She is AMAZING,” she said. Astrid from Storey Creative reviewed our website and told us the honest truth of where the website is now and what we could do to make it better. This short meeting was the confirmation we needed that we needed to tackle this project this year.
In the end, Storey Creative was the obvious choice. It allowed Christ Community to own the website and to have owner privileges to make changes that we would have to call someone to make before. It allowed us to work with someone who knew website trends, all things WordPress, and was able to train the staff on how to use it well.
What were your main goals for the redesign project?
The main goals of the redesign project were to make important information easily accessible – for everyone. They could find information within one or two clicks on the website. I also wanted to lay the foundation for when we allowed patient online check-in or online bill pay or a secure way to send new patient paperwork.
In addition to information accessibility, we really wanted the website to reflect our brand and our mission at Christ Community. We wanted the website to show what made us different than the rest of the primary health clinics. No other primary health clinic in Georgia has integrated behavioral health and dental all in one in! I think we are pretty special.
What were some of the unexpected challenges you faced during the redesign?
Having been involved with website design in the past, we had a pretty good understanding of what it took to complete a project this size.
Were there unexpected benefits that came from having the site redesigned?
The accessibility plug-in is very new to me so it was unexpected for me to have a fully ADA compliant website all by a plug-in that you can customize. We had accessibility in mind driving the design, but I was interested in seeing how the site would be ADA compliant in the end.
We are already seeing the value of the bilingual design and mobile friendliness.
Is there anything during the design process that felt like an “ah-ha” moment?
Once each page was designed, we went back to the original poster and stickies and mapped out the navigation and pages. Because there were many pages to redesign we had to design them in stages and groups. After looking at everything, a few pages duplicated information. My “ah-ha” moment was to consolidate the number of pages even further and make it easier to access information. As a result, some of the pages that were redesigned – we ended up not using.
What was the approval process like in house?
The approval process was ongoing. We involved the CEO and key stakeholders from the beginning. At the end, we had department heads review copy of their designated pages and offer feedback. We conducted a focus group of employees who were assigned to complete a few tasks on the website. Before the website launch, we had an official training to 100+ staff regarding the new website.
Is there anything you would do differently before and during the redesign process?
We would have allocated more time to the copy/writing process. And we wish we reached out to Storey Creative sooner!