"Our development website is focused on why constituents should give, ways they can give, where they can give and additional information relating to gifts. As such, we should be sharing stories of how those gifts are impacting our students and the university as a whole. This site also houses a section about our current capital campaign. Because we are trying to inspire gift-giving, we will need to make sure we are pulling at the readers' emotions to make them feel good as they are giving.
Originally, our alumni and development/giving content were on one site. We made the strategic decision to create separate sites for each. The previous design was dated and didn't give the communications team places to highlight donor stories, featured news, or campaign updates. By having our content and design teams collaborate on the overall strategy of the redesign, they were able to work together to make sure the content is served up in a way that is easy for the reader to find, as well as a beautiful design.
With the new design, users were up 13 percent and sessions were up 14 percent from the last month of the old design to the first month of the new design."
From the Judges
Judges saw this as a well-executed redesign. Judges appreciate the planning phase, with solid peer and market research employed to make the case to seek approval for a new approach to the institution's giving site. The result: A fresh, new, user-friendly site that has strong appeal and is enjoying a solid increase in traffic and site usage.
