GROW Windham is a non-profit organization that creates intergenerational spaces that empower youth to develop advocacy and leadership skills and help bring awareness on food and environmental justice in the town of Windham, CT. A well-designed website will not only enhances the organization’s visibility but also facilitates its mission by providing essential information and resources to the community they serve.
While discussing a need for a redesign of GROW Windham’s website, the goal was to create a user-friendly, informative, and visually appealing online presence that effectively communicates their values and initiatives.
I wanted to ensure that the new website meets the needs of their users that supports their mission as well. Before diving into research, there were some already obvious pain points on the website which led me to conduct a UX Audit.
The audit revealed issues such as:
Poor Visual Design: The current visual design is outdated and lacks visual hierarchy structure.
Mobile Responsiveness: The current design is not optimized for smaller screens.
By addressing these pain points and focusing on user experience, accessibility and responsiveness, I can create a website that not only serves as a valuable resource for the community but also effectively supports GROW Windham’s mission and goals.
Based on the UX audit that was completed, I decided to break down users into 2 groups: Primary & Secondary:
GROW Windham’s site was created on WIX and hosted on DreamHost. I checked their web analytics YTD (2023) and the results supported the UX audit:
Beginning with organizing the content on the website, I worked on streamlining the site map by condensing and removing unnecessary pages and navigation items to simplify the site and make it much more user friendly.
Sketching some low-fidelity wireframes, which served as the initial blueprint for the new site, that were then transformed into a digital version, helped create a clear and structured skeleton for the website. This foundational framework became an invaluable tool for illustrating my vision to my clients. It allowed them to see the potential of their new site and understand the direction we were heading. Through this collaborative process, we laid the groundwork for a website that would be both functional and visually engaging.
I proposed the idea of crafting a new logo to better meet these needs since their current logo had legibility issues, but they insisted on keeping the original design. I devised a simple solution: enlarging the logo & enhancing the color to improve its legibility without altering its essence. This subtle adjustment allowed their brand to shine more clearly and effectively. To further support their vision, I developed a comprehensive set of branding guidelines and a design system. These tools serve as a valuable resource, empowering them to seamlessly integrate new content into their site while maintaining a cohesive and accessible brand identity.
The old website was built using Wix and my clients did say how they would struggle with updating the site since it was a steep learning curve for them. I recommended Webflow since it has a "drag and drop" style for elements on the site. Since I built the new website using Webflow, I needed to switch over the domain name from the Wix site. I went on DreamHost, where they were hosting their site as well as their domain name, to switch over the domain name to the new Webflow site.
Due to a typo in the .TXT field, it did not propagate anything at first. Once I realized this error, I corrected the typo and the domain name was now verified and ready for use on the new site. Ensuring all accessibility points were complete, I did a quick accessibility check with the help of Webflow’s audit panel. Once the audit was complete, the website was launched. A CMS Collection was added to make adding blog posts much simpler without having to go into the designer.
We had envisioned several enhancements to elevate the website's functionality, but unfortunately, budget constraints have delayed their implementation for now.Among these planned features was a language toggle, designed to seamlessly switch between English and Spanish, making the site more accessible to Windham's Spanish-speaking community. Additionally, we aimed to introduce a search function on the youth resources page, enabling young users to quickly find and access resources through the existing PDF catalog. While these improvements are on hold, they remain a priority for future development, as we continue to strive for a more inclusive and user-friendly experience.
Overall It was an absolute pleasure to work with GROW Windham and being able to create a site that fits their user needs as well as their own.