Case study for website design & development

www.webbrightservices.com

A Bright Case Study

http://www.webbrightservices.com/

www.webbrightservices.comwww.webbrightservices.com

The ChallengeColumbus Metropolitan Club (CMC) is a well-

established membership organization in Columbus,

Ohio that has been serving its 800 individual and

corporate members for the past 37 years through its

weekly forums, special events, and other programming.

CMC has been using Wild Apricot (WA) to manage

their website, membership, and events for the past 5

years. They’ve been pleased with WA functionality, but want to enhance the design and navigation of the site.

The home page highlighted upcoming events- making it

easy for site visitors to find and signup for upcoming

events. CMC events are well-attended (200+

attendees) with some celebrity guests including local

and national business and political leaders.

However, CMC has an active Facebook page and popular YouTube channel, in addition to other resources, which the site didn’t promote very well.




Example issues

The site had a top-level page called

Facebook. The page had a “giant thumb”

image and instructions to “like” CMC and

visit the Facebook page.

This is neither intuitive or acceptable for

site visitors. It is also a waste of the

website real estate. (Do not try this on

your website!)




And again…

This page featured CMC’s YouTube

channel and The Ohio Channel under

“Streaming Video Archive”.

Would you know to look for this content

there?




What CMC wanted & what we promised

• Cleaner, more professional look

• Simpler, easier navigation

• Better recognition of major funders in flash animation

• More visibility to social networks and external resources (Facebook &

YouTube)

• But, maintain upcoming weekly events front-and-center on home page




The SolutionWhat we delivered



What we delivered

• Simple, clean, and elegant Wild Apricot theme

• Easy-to-navigate website re-structure

• Custom event and sitemap widgets

• Animated speaker banner (image slider)

• Enhanced marketing and publicity strategy




Old

Design.

Generic.

Poorly-

designed.

Lack

strategy.



New

Design.

Clean.

Simple.

Elegant.



Custom FeaturesThe staff at CMC have been manually adding

and updating upcoming events on the home

page using HTML and Wild Apricot’s CMS.

While Wild Apricot has a built-in event widget, it

did not provide the design or event details CMC

is looking for. We customized a new event

widget that automatically pulls events from Wild

Apricot’s event module and displays event title,

time & date, speaker, and event sponsor.

The events are still front-and-center on the

home page giving them the visibility they need,

but with more style and less work.




Guest Rotating ImagesCMC hosts hundreds of guest speakers

throughout the year and wanted to feature

as many as of them as possible. How do

you do that without crowding the home

page?

We added an image slider (animated

banner) with images of speakers that

rotated on the home page. The images

show a representation of CMC’s speakers

and community, which CMC will be able to

update a few times throughout the year.




Sitemap WidgetOur designer did an amazing job creating a state-of-

the-art website design for CMC. While some elements

look fantastic in Photoshop, the development tool

sometimes doesn’t support the designer’s vision. In this

case, the designer added an attractive sitemap in the

site footer, however, Wild Apricot does not support this

style. Luckily, our developers are great at pushing

through Wild Apricot limitations. In this case, we

created a custom sitemap widget that looks like the

original design and has the capability of automatically

updating any structural changes in the website.




Marketing Focus

Talking with CMC, we determined three (3) objectives that are

important for the organization:

• Driving membership

• Promoting forums and special events

• Gaining financial support

To allow CMC to achieve these goals through their website, we

added call-to-action (CTA) buttons with clear, actionable verbs.

• Register for Events

• Join CMC

• Support CMC

We placed the buttons on the home page in prominent positions to

gain the most results.

Other important marketing features that we incorporated in the

website included an on-demand video archive, newsletter

subscription, Facebook, and YouTube.




Enhanced PublicityCMC draws a lot of attention in the media;

writers and reports cover CMC activities and

news all the time. We made this coverage

more visible by posting article titles directly

on the website with active links to each

article. The custom widget, called “CMC in

The News, includes a link to CMC News

History which opens an external page with

more articles.




MediaWe cleaned up the site navigation and

added a section for “Media” which hosted

important media channels including

Facebook, YouTube, news subscription and

a newsletter archive. This gives these

external resources more prominent

placement and attention.




What our client says

“Our experience working with Webbright was very positive. Other providers never

understood the Wild Apricot part.. thus they couldn’t price fairly. (We heard it will

cost you this.. And we will figure out WA after you pay us.) Webbright listened to

our ideas, concerns, and hopes, and reflected these in the work product.

We would highly recommend Webbright for their expertise with Wild Apricot,

confidence in their deliverables, and creative

solutions.”

– Andrew Campbell, Program Director



http://www.columbusmetroclub.org/

http://www.columbusmetroclub.org/


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