Websites
I came to the world of web development by accident, and I have to be honest: facing my first project I was like “can I do this? I know nothing about back end development or content management systems. I’m a storyteller!”.
But websites are stories. From the homepage “nice to meet you”, through the story beats of content, all the way to the call to action, it’s a true audience journey (ideally filled with surprises rather than obstacles).
I’ve come to love working with web developers because it’s such a marriage of form and function. Visual design, UX, speed, accessibility, security—they all matter, and all influence each other. The biggest lesson I’ve learned: mobile first (truly—don’t just talk the talk).
Meeting the user where they are
THE IDEA: Use audience research and data to guide a refresh of the Environmental Defense Fund's flagship website. The goal: reflect the new brand identity and organizational structure while making it easier for potential donors and members to find the work that’s relevant to them.
We did a lot of work restructuring the homepage and the top-level landing pages, but the biggest change was to the top drop-down nav. Borrowing heavily from retail sites, the idea was to give a site visitor a complete understanding of EDF (and access to all levels of work) even if they never scrolled down the homepage.
THE IMPACT: Huge success! Scroll and heat maps proved that both page engagement and time on the site were up significantly. More significantly, the Quant/Qual and A/B testing we did yielded a 91% increase in one-time donations and a 53% increase in monthly donations.
View the guided tour, above, or visit the live site here.
Finding inspiration anywhere
THE IDEA: After much research and many interviews with business sustainability team members (the target audience), we wanted to create a site that would make it easy for them to find solutions relevant to their specific supply chain needs. That’s when we realized there were many working models up and running successfully: Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime… name your shopping site where you can browse, search and filter to find just what you want.
THE IMPACT: A home run that continues to grow an audience of registered users six years after its launch. Also a big B2B success, as we brought on partners who also had solutions we could point to.
View the guided tour, above, or visit the live site here.
Constantly striving for improvement
THE IDEA: Released annually, Environmental Defense Fund’s Vision 2030 (essentially their strategic plan) always had decent results in driving donations and attracting new supporters. Looking hard at the data on how visitors used the site, we constantly made improvements each year to meet the audience’s demands that the site deliver just the essential information quickly and easily.
THE IMPACT: Great results that got better every year. We distilled it down to a one-page site that minimized scrolling and maximized the audience’s ability to efficiently find what was relevant to them. User data showed a consistent uptick in engagement—and response from donors to the Development team continues to be overwhelmingly positive.
View the guided tour, above, or visit the live site here.
Understanding the goal
THE IDEA: Make a website for five people? That was the goal of EDF’s Development team: create a simple, one-page site that 5 of their most “evangelized” donors/board members could use as a tool to convert like-minded friends. We mapped out a narrative that they could follow (or easily improvise on) and built the site with plenty of interaction to underscore their pitch.
THE IMPACT: The signup rate was the highest conversion rate seen for this type of creative asset. Attention seconds and interaction rate were high, particularly for the search audience. Audiences who engaged with this site first yielded higher Click-through rates (CTR) and lower Cost per leads (CPL) in later promotions than those who did not.
View the guided tour, above, or visit the live site here.