Brief
Connective is a Houston-based nonprofit with the mission of transforming social services into a more connected, empathetic, and accessible system through human-centered design and innovative technology.
For an organization doing such vital work, it was often difficult to explain the “what” behind the “why.” That’s where we came in, using content strategy and clean design to illustrate who they are, what they do, and why they do it.
The challenge
An organization that sorts out complexities should be able to easily tell you what it is that they offer. The challenge is that Connective offers a lot. They create programs, lead policy change, and offer consulting services, among other things.
The site needed to function as a valuable resource for their partners as well as for members of the public seeking social services. It needed to explain who they are, what they do, and why they do it. And it needed to make good on the value that they’ve already provided through data visualization and integration.
How we did it
1. Messaging to a complex audience
The first challenge was that the website needed to function differently for different users, who ranged from potential investors all the way to people in search of public services. All visitors needed to be addressed and directed to the correct resources clearly and efficiently.
To align messaging priorities and user experience, we conducted a persona exercise to determine the goals and motivations, barriers and challenges, and specific use-cases of the different users visiting the site.
Our findings? The needs of Connective’s users were just as vast as the organization’s service offerings.
2. Ease of access, accessibility
For a site with multiple unique user journeys, accessibility, and functionality go hand in hand.
Varied, persistent calls to action were deployed to ensure that users are directed to the services and pages that they need clearly and often.
Because accessibility is one of Connective’s core values, we ensured that every part of the site is accessible for users with disabilities or users who are blind. The site can be easily navigated via keyboard tabbing or using a screen reader. The site also contains a language dropdown that can fully translate the page into four different languages.
We also took into account ease of use for the clients themselves. As a civic technology nonprofit, Connective needs a site that’s easy for anyone on their team to update. We built the site so that anyone with a login is able to easily edit or create new pages using a combination of custom-built components.
3. Building, leading, sharing
Ease of navigation and location detection were critical to the site’s user experience, but competitive search optimizations were also crucial. To protect the most critical elements of the user’s journey while still seizing valuable SEO opportunities, thoughtful, useful content was distributed tactfully throughout the site in the form of explanatory text, helpful blogs, and confidence-building background info crafted to reinforce brand and rank.
To fully articulate exactly what it is that Connective does, we attached the “why” to every service bucket. They build with program design, lead with ecosystem change initiatives, and share with consulting services.
Now, their position as program builders and community leaders is apparent to anyone visiting any page with the question “What does Connective do?” on their mind.
4. Awareness, credibility, and trust
High-quality, content-driven service pages were created not only for ease of understanding what Connective does and how they do it but to increase web integrity and allow the pages to rank more easily on SERPs. Although nonprofits don’t depend on high-competition, high-volume keywords in the same way as B2C businesses, we applied SEO best practices on every page, so that service seekers and donors alike can easily find the site and get what they need.
We needed to signal credibility and trust to the audiences, as well as the algorithms. We accomplished this through data visualization and tool integration.
Connective has done an incredible amount of meaningful work across communities in the region already, it was only up to us to make it pleasant to look at. If the credibility-building tiles aren’t your thing, we utilized Tableau integration to slot in detailed interactive tables for a hands-on tour of their story of transformation.
