American Bird Conservancy
Case Study of a Site Redesign in Progress
Overview
American Bird Conservancy does significant, effective, and far-reaching work to support birds and bird habitat conservation, and has done so for decades.
However, their web presence does not accurately reflect their significance as an organization, their reputation for effective action, or the many and varied opportunities for others' support to enhance their impact. The current site structure negatively impacts the experience of those who visit the site, and consequently, the organization.
Intention
Redesign American Bird Conservancy's website to:
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Effectively reflect their work and values.
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Raise their profile as the top non-profit working in bird habitat conservation.
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Enable them to better grow and engage their community (including membership and donation increases).
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Improve overall site performance through restructured information architecture applying SEO best-practices and appropriate conversion funnels.
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Create a manageable site backend with the ability to grow, update, and maintain (including site templates and styles for flexible content development).
Audience Focus
A wide variety of visitors will visit the site. Some seek info, some seek ways to help. We must use compelling storytelling to build trust, inspire action, and foster long-term engagement.
People seeking bird info
Require a guided experience, because they likely ended up on the site from a Google search and will not know what their next steps are to stay engaged. They should be presented with opportunities for deeper engagement with American Bird Conservancy’s broader mission and activities.
Potential Donors & Members
Must quickly grasp who American Bird Conservancy is, what they stand for, and the work they do to make an impact. They should feel compelled to support American Bird Conservancy based on an inspiring introduction.
Donors
Donors need clear proof of the impact their donation makes. They seek reassurance regarding credibility and the responsible handling of contributions. Donors also need to understand all of their options for donations like how they can renew or give more.
Foundations
Require transparent evidence showcasing responsible and effective utilization of substantial funds in specific contexts and locations, underscoring the accountability and impact achieved.
Members
Look for clarity on the benefits of their membership, its impact, and straightforward processes for membership adjustments, renewals, and personal detail updates.
Partners & Localization
While not a primary audience, they do need authentic and respectful representation on the site through language, accurate use of logos, descriptions, and imagery that reflects their collaborations, programs, and shared goals.
Roles
I worked with and presented to an internal team, and the client directly. All work was done remotely, using Zoom, Otter recordings, and shared documents including Figma, Miro, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.
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Strategy & UX Design
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Vice President of Strategy
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Experience Design Director
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UX Designer (my role)
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Design
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Digital Creative Director
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Art Director
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Digital Designer
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Development
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Technical Director
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Principal Developer
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Project Management
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Producer
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Client
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We worked with the client (American Bird Conservancy) directly, holding regular reviews and check-ins with various representatives, depending on the phase of work.
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Process
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Discovery
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Stakeholder Interviews
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Competitor / Best-in-Class Review
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Heuristic / Usability Review
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Analytics Review
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Functional Prioritization
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User Experience
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Testing
Stakeholder Interviews
In order to create early alignment, we looked at the findings from the Stakeholder Interviews. These interviews gave us a chance to ask questions, listen, and learn from the multiple voices involved in the American Bird Conservancy’s website experience.
What we learned helped us to identify internal goals, audience needs, content strategy and website functionality, and understand what hasn't worked in the past so we can make a better experience for the future.
We interviewed:
Leadership
Aimed at aligning the website's role with the organization's mission and strategic objectives, addressing challenges and identifying features to improve donor engagement and demonstrate impact.
Program Development
Assesses the effectiveness of the website in representing and promoting its various programs, as well as to identify any initiatives that may be lacking online visibility. Additionally, aim to explore opportunities for the website to better support program development and increase user engagement.
Development
Targets key aspects of your website's redesign, focusing on enhancing donation and membership experiences, aligning the site's purpose with your mission, capturing engaging storytelling, understanding audience needs, and achieving business objectives.
JEDI / Spanish Speakers
Designed to uncover the motivations and strategic objectives behind language localization efforts for the website. Aiming to identify challenges due to linguistic and cultural diversity among users. We are also looking to determine if any language-related issues have adversely affected the donation process, and to consider the topic of cultural sensitivities in content and design.
Communications / Marketing
Seeks to evaluate the website's alignment with the organization's communication strategy, its future potential, and how success is measured. Will also examine user experience and campaign efficacy.
Example Stakeholder Interview Assets
Interviews highlighted the critical need for these key themes:
Clarifying the Work
Stronger mission communication: Ensure all visitors effortlessly grasp American Bird Conservancy's intentions and core values, while leaving a lasting, compelling impression of their dedication to bird conservation.
Website Usability
Discoverability & findability: Lean into a more clear informational structure that encourages discovery and ensures content is findable.
Impact Visualization & Storytelling
Better showcasing of organizational impacts: Illustrate project achievements through dynamic visualizations, effectively communicating impact and foster a deeper audience connection and understanding.
Inclusion & Accessibility
A bilingual and inclusive user experience: Incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles into the website experience, through attentive translation, cultural sensitivities in the content and design, and thoughtful inclusion of partners.
Encouraging Engagement
Streamlined donation, action, and membership processes: Make the path to engagement obvious, motivating, impactful, and trustworthy
Competitive Analysis
Our analysis against key players like Audubon Society and Cornell revealed opportunities in:
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Storytelling
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Donation/Membership Processes
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Resource Library Utilization
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Navigation
American Bird Conservancy's website can differentiate by utilizing the bird library to showcase their unique, and long-term dedication to habitat conservation, and their significant and effective partnerships, while also strategically connecting to other parts of the site to increase visitor engagement.
Usability Review
Using a Usability Review to evaluate the current American Bird Conservancy’s website gave us the opportunity to identify usability issues and recommend solutions by assessing key components of the site. The review focused on pinpointing problematic features, guiding improvements, and ensuring the interface aligns with visitor’s expectations.
We reviewed the following:
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First Impressions
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Navigation
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Search
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Bird Library
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Donation
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Page Complexity & Content Strategy
Analytics Review
The Analytics Review provided a comprehensive examination of data crucial for optimizing overall digital performance. We reviewed data on acquisition channels, search queries, page performance, user flows, and demographics. This review informed design decisions by uncovering insights into user behavior, preferences, and pain points, enabling us to make informed recommendations for strategic enhancements.
Criteria
Over 12 months (February 2023-2024), a review of:
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User Devices
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User Flows
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User Acquisition Channels
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Search Query Insights
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User Demographics
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SEO Findings
User Survey
The User Survey was structured to gain a better understanding of the visitor experiences for the website. By combining this direct-experience feedback with info previously gathered during the Website Discovery, SEO Review, Usability Study, Analytics Review, and Functional Prioritization, we obtained a fuller view of the experience landscape.
Our questions were focused on a few key areas:
Visits
How frequently are people visiting?
Impact
How do people feel after visiting?
Usability
Is the site easy to use?
Interests
What areas hold the biggest draw? What would they like to see more of?
Formats
How do people prefer to take in information?
Mobile
How is the mobile experience?
Donation / Membership Experience
What compels someone to donate or become a member? How was the process for them?
What we learned
Overall, many people are visiting the site, enjoying the experience, and not experiencing too many challenges navigating to information, or finding what they’re looking for. After visiting the site, they’re generally feeling more informed about birds/bird habitat, more empowered in taking action, and more appreciative of birds. These are all wonderful things, and things to feel proud of with the current site. That said, there are definitely areas for improvement, particularly around the mobile experience.
Why it matters
We learned that some people never visit the site at all, even as current donors. About half the donors have never visited the mobile site. Individuals expressed appreciation for the topics already present (such as the bird library, solutions, and threats), but were also clear about things they’d like to see more of, and formats that speak to them (such as video, short form stories, infographics, and interactive maps). Additionally, they were clear about what info would make a difference to them in terms of their choice to donate.
Leveraging this feedback, as we look at the structure and content of the site going forward, should help increase engagement and conversion, and (ideally), that sense of wonder.
Information Architecture
Using all the knowledge we gained from our reviews, as well as insights from the Stakeholder Interviews, we laid out the information architecture to increase find-ability and ease of orientation by applying a logic to the structure that would be intuitive and clear to users, even those new to the site, or those not landing on the homepage as their first entry-point.
User Flows
Once the Information Architecture was laid out, we began structuring the User Flows, to determine the steps each type of user would take to achieve their goals. We explored the differences between new and returning users, how the search option may play a role, and how different points of origin may impact the flow, adjusting it as needed to create the most intuitive and efficient paths with the least friction. We narrowed down the primary flows to five main paths for each user to achieve their goal.
Wireframes & Content Strategy
With the flows determined, we began structuring the wires for mobile and desktop, focusing on primary pages first to begin to identify key elements that could be reused throughout the site.
We went through a series of reviews with the client to achieve a balance of storytelling, intuitive interface, desirable engagement, and overall thoughtful content strategy. Full page structures were then broken down into their modular elements, which were then compiled with similar modular elements to confirm consistency throughout the site, and identify any places for simplification prior to final design.
Key functionality details were noted in dev mode for developers' review. Throughout the process, regular reviews also took place with design and dev to avoid any surprises, identify any challenges in structure, and confirm the desired path was workable.
New Navigation Testing
Once the new navigation was finalized with the client, we reviewed it to determine how successful it was at addressing its primary goals:
Entice Engagement
Create clear funnels towards basic engagement options: donate, renew, join, act, learn.
Clarify Focus
Provide useful insight to distinguish the focus, intention, and methods of American Bird Conservancy from other similar organizations. Make it obvious who they are, where they work, what they’ve done and plan to do, how they do it, and why.
Demonstrate Interconnectivity
Illustrate the interdependence of birds to their habitats and vice versa, as well as different sections of the site to one another.
Enhance Storytelling
Refine the narrative of individual birds and habitats by creating engaging, predictable sections of scannable content, embellished with moments of whimsy and delight.
Improve Findability
Through improved navigational structure and search, a redesigned bird library format, and thoughtfully applied links, help visitors quickly pinpoint info of interest, but also become aware of the breadth and depth of the site.
Address Accessibility
Support an inclusive experience for all users through intentional awareness and application of relevant guidelines and best practices for accessibility
Retain Success
Finally, in improving portions of the site, do not inadvertantly negatively impact access to, or engagement with, popular areas of the site, such as “Avoiding Glass Collisions”
Conclusion
This was an amazing project to have the opportunity to work on, and I'm very much looking forward to the launch of the new site.
I believe the UX Design and content strategy work we did set the stage for final design and development, to finalize an updated site that will have successfully achieved the intentions set at the start.