Roots ConnectED Website Redesign
About Roots ConnectED: (RC) is a non-profit based in Brooklyn, NYC. They are a national professional development organization committed to supporting school communities through Coaching, Institutes, and Workshops. RC specializes in helping school communities and educators to create intentionally integrated and inclusive classrooms.
The Need for a Website Redesign:
Because of the global pandemic, RC faced the challenge of moving most of their programs from being held in-person to being held primarily online. To accommodate for these newly needed features, user experience and ease of navigation on the website became a crucial component in expanding RC’s number of users and also in maintaining both new and old clients.
The previous website did not reflect the updated mission and vision of Roots ConnectED. The previous year, new pages were added quickly to respond to the shift of RC holding most of their programs online, but upon reassessing the mission and direction of the organization, it became clear that what was being highlighted on the website was not what Roots ConnectED holds as its primary goal which is to maintain a long term approach in working with schools and school communities to create intentionally integrated and inclusive communities supporting their mission statement.
Design Process
Time was taken at each of these stages and is outlined in the following pages. Though the process was often not linear, these are general processes that were used while designing.
Empathize with the Users (Clients of Roots ConnectED)
Roots ConnectED took time to listen to their coaching clients to hear what their experience was using the original RC website.
Empathize with Roots ConnectED Business Goals
Roots connected also came with a wishlist of features that they wanted to see implemented on the website that would be in alignment with their vision for growth and would continue their high level of customer care.
Goals:
To improve user experience and ease of navigation for users on the website.
To make the website reflect the mission and vision of Roots ConnectED
Overall goal: To increase user engagement with the website for both new and existing clients.
Deliverables:
Redesign the website. Includes improved navigation, the reformatting of key pages, and updated website information architecture.
Navigation Menu Overhaul
Previous Navigation Menu
Because of the need to switch all of RC’s programs to being held online, new pages were added quickly to respond to the shift. This led to information and web pages getting buried and not made accessible in a way that would support RC’s clients and site users.
One key place that this was apparent was in the drop down navigation menu. What was being highlighted in the navigation bar was not what Roots ConnectED holds as its primary goal.
There was also a need to eliminate redundancies in the menu i.e. multiple access points to the home page when simply having it accessible by clicking the logo was enough (especially when menu bar space is limited).
Other redundancies, such as “Get ConnectED” which brought users to the same page as “Contact” and “Sign Up for Free Consultation”, needed to be eliminated and cleaned up.
Previous navigation menu. Click on image to see enlarged view
Design Strategy: Card Sort
After an assessment of each pages and content on each, a card sort exercise was used to help assess which pages would be added, removed, or combined as part of this website overhaul. Each page was refined and information was consolidated and then page types were defined. This card sort was done in a setting where the Executive Director, myself, and a workshop participant created affinity groupings of cards based on the revised, refined, and consolidated pages. These were then reviewed, grouped, and sorted to create a new navigation menu to cross the top of the website.
Because of the need to switch all of RC’s programs to being held online, new pages were added quickly to respond to the shift. This led to information and web pages getting buried and not made accessible in a way that would support RC’s clients and site users.
One key place that this was apparent was in the drop down navigation menu. What was being highlighted in the navigation bar was not what Roots ConnectED holds as its primary goal.
There was also a need to eliminate redundancies in the menu i.e. multiple access points to the home page when simply having it accessible by clicking the logo was enough (especially when menu bar space is limited).
Other redundancies, such as “Get ConnectED” which brought users to the same page as “Contact” and “Sign Up for Free Consultation”, needed to be eliminated and cleaned up.
Updated Navigation Menu
Wire Frame
Click on image to see enlarged view
Application
Next steps:
Create an “About Us” page that consolidates some of the menu items into one more organized page (also, heuristically, information such as the organization’s mission and vision statements, as well as organization history in this case, information about the learning site, belongs on a page like something called “About Us”
Page Redesign
Redesign of pages to help with navigation and alignment with mission and vision of Roots ConnectED
Workshop Pages:
Originally on these pages, we had all of our workshops, along with descriptions and dates, listed. Upon analyzing the user friendliness of this, I realized that this format lead to the following:
Problems:
For users:
The users were forced to scroll through a ton of text
There wasn’t enough visual hierarchy to let the workshop info stand out
The page generally had an overwhelming amount of text that lead to nothing being read/understood
On the backend/maintenance side, dates did not auto-update once a workshop had passed so someone needed to go and manually delete dates
Solutions:
Create hierarchy of information on each page
Add a monthly calendar so that planning for registration was more straightforward
Reduce the maintenance of each page: dates of workshops now auto-update and remove themselves from the page once the dates has passed
Original Educator Workshop Page:
Updated Educator Workshop Page:
Features We Added:
Added a “Join our mailing list” pop up for new visitors to the site
Added an Impact Page
Included: infographics to help schools/organizations better understand our reach and capacity
Added a “Register Here” button to help with streamlining info pages with ticket purchasing
Roots ConnectED has been able to grow their number of projects in coaching projects with schools and organizations. The website has been successfully updated to serve as a tool for both securing new clients as well as serving as a resource for existing RC projects.
As shown here and in the previous analytic graphics, the number of website visitors has nearly doubled since the update of the website
Other Pages that were Revised and Updated:
donate page
home page
resources pages
worked on client intake questionnaires and helped in navigation of those