Chamber Executive Article Archive

Fall 2012

Women 4 Women
www.w4w.org

This large non-profit raises money to fund projects that improve the health and economic well-being of women and girls in Louisville, Ky. It was getting few benefits from its website and not doing much online marketing to promote it. They asked us to help them improve their online presence and encourage site visitors to make online donations, register for events, become a member and more. We put together a package that included the following:

• A new website using a content management system (CMS) for easy page creation and updating.
• An integrated fundraising software package allowing them to receive online donations, register members and handle event registrations.
• Videos for their target focus areas of financial and food literacy that are integrated with the website and posted on YouTube and Facebook.
• A social media campaign that drove people to the website and raised the profile of Women 4 Women.
• A mobile version of the website for visitors to access from any smart phone.
• An e-mail marketing platform with a custom newsletter template and website signup.

We worked closely with Women 4 Women staff on the layout functionality and implementation. The new website provided a much easier platform for staff to make updates, which has freed up several hours a month for a couple of staff members who can focus more on the organization’s core mission instead of website work.

The new site and e-mail marketing program was launched in mid-May. As of Aug. 1, website traffic had increased 543 percent and donations were up 17 percent. Gwen Cooper, executive director of Women 4 Women, said, “We were amazed at how much more powerful our web presence could be and at how much we could improve measureable results. And, the whole process was painless.”

Lesa Seibert is president of Xstreme Media, a web design and multimedia firm in Louisville, Ky., with clients in several states. Lesa will conduct a free communications webinar for ACCE members on Nov. 29, 2-3 p.m. EST.

Associated Oregon Industries
www.aoi.org

Associated Oregon Industries (AOI) is a non-profit organization that functions as a chamber. It was founded in 1895 as an advocacy group focused on gaining awareness of products developed in Oregon.

AOI’s five-year-old website was not fostering visitor interaction and may have hampered membership growth because of technological and design limitations. The site lacked design-friendly content such as photos and videos, and updating news pages was laborious. Since the homepage is the most viewed area of a website, it must be current and include information that visitors want and need. Additionally, calls to action such as registering for membership and viewing AOI’s major initiatives were not easily accessible, and user activity statistics were lacking

Our solution addressed all these needs and included strong design focused on drawing the eye to the most important areas of the site, such as calls to action and current topics. The site was built on our Accrisoft Freedom platform, which allows for easy content updates including all types of media such as images and video.

To stay on the cutting edge of technology and deliver information to visitors, the redesigned AOI site is responsive to mobile phones and tablets as well as PCs. Depending on which device visitors use to view the website, they will see it optimized for the dimensions of the device they use. This technology is becoming the industry standard due to the popularity of handheld devices.

Jeff Kline is founder, CEO and president of Accrinet Corporation which provides chambers of commerce with website design and digital marketing solutions, including blogging, social networking, email marketing and lead nurturing. Jeff writes weekly about digital strategies for chambers.

Download this article: Website Redesign: Case Studies  (2)