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Case Examples

Creating site navigation structures

The WON Institute for Graduate Studies needed a web site that served a wide variety of purposes, audiences and programs. For example, it had to clearly serve the distinct needs of three separate graduate programs; it had to provide accreditation agencies with access to critical information; it had to meet the needs of each of the three student bodies; it had to provide information and applications to prospective students; it had to serve alumni; and it had to provide the community with access to information about community programs, services and events. There were dozens of navigational elements required, and it was a real challenge to figure out how best to organize them. We looked at over a dozen web sites, and tried four approaches before coming up with the three-tiered approach we finally arrived at.

HowToGoOrganic.Com is a massive resource web site we developed for the Organic Trade Association, the international trade association of the organic industry. They wanted to build a web site that would allow businesses, farmers and consumers to get access to critical resources about organic products and organic farming through a variety of paths. For example, they wanted to give people access by state; by audience (business, farmer, consumer); and through a step by step structured process based on key questions people have about farming organically, or creating organic products. It was an incredible challenge not only to come up with a rational structure that didn't overwhelm people, but also to build a complex relational database that would display content in the right categories in multiple locations within the site. We worked on it as a team, mostly by phone and email, and the results were excellent.

Fundraising tools

The ability to seamlessly accept online payments for donations, products, memberships and events is a great convenience for both visitors to your site, and to you. We offer a variety of solutions to accomplishing this:

Even though their web site had not officially launched, and with most of the content still not in place, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey generated over $20,000 in one month in membership dues, conference registrations, donations and sponsorships using integrated online payment forms built by us using a hosted web solution called Business Catalyst.

The American Dance Therapy Association is using another member management tool, Wild Apricot, that allows them to accept online payments for a wide range of membership levels, generate automatic renewal notices, and more.

The Breastfeeding Resource Center is a small organization that wanted an affordable online store that would be easy for them to manage and update with new products and prices. The Business Catalyst content management system easily allos them to add products, change prices, and even add new categories of products. The shopping cart is built into the system, and allows for easy one step payment. It also allows for event registration and payment directly form the event calendar.

Content management

Ninety percent of my sites are content management sites that allow my clients, large and small, to manage their own sites without specialized knowledge. It's critical to the health and vitality and effectiveness of a site that it be maintained and updated easily and regularly.

One of the first CMS sites I developed was for Weavers Way Food Cooperative. Before I redeveloped the site, it was static and almost never visited. I created an attractive and well-organized new site, but if that was all I did, I would have failed. Without regular maintenance and updating, the site would have again become a backwater. Instead, I trained staff in use of an easy-to-use CMS, and the site has become the central clearinghouse for information within a vital community of members and visitors. It is heavily trafficked, and is updated several times a month.

More recently, I developed a CMS site for the American Dance Therapy Association using a tool that allowed them to easily management both members and content. Prior to developing the new site, the staff had struggled with a poorly designed content management system that made it almost impossible to add new content in the ways they wanted. After a mere two hours of training by phone for the new site, both staff involved in web maintenance were like ducks in water: adding new content, sending out emails, updating member records, contributing to discussion forums, processing donations and dues, and much, much more.

Awbury Arboretum in East Mt. Airy had another moribund, rarely updated site. I redeveloped it using Business Catalyst (it was launched in July, 2011), and now the site is updated regularly, and visitor traffic is steadily increasing.

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