The founders of a non-profit sold everything, including their home, to fund a school for at-risk teens in Mexico.
With just six weeks before their move, I redesigned their site– after which donations rose by 29%.
Project Overview
Project Roles:
•Sole UX Designer •Sole Graphic Designer •Content Editing
Phase 1: Design Sprint
Timeline: 6 weeks
Redesign website to align with their expanded mission
Conduct user research to inform design
Clarify and streamline website navigation and messaging
Phase 2: Ongoing Improvements
Timeline: Ongoing
Conduct further user research
Enhance user experience for donors, volunteers, and service trip participants
Design any new pages, functions, or graphics needed
About the Non-Profit
Find Your Path Mission
Find Your Path Mission is a non-profit organization focused on helping at-risk teens in Mexico.
It originally started as a self-improvement program in the United States that offered facilitated service trips to Mexican orphanages as a growth experience.
However, during these trips they discovered that many orphanages in Mexico don’t house or accept teenagers.
Deeply moved by this, they sold everything, including their home, to purchase land and build a campus specifically for at-risk teens.
Going forward, they want to offer service trips to the new school to help fund their mission.
Initial Website Assessment
Key Website Functions
The following are key tasks identified by non-profit leadership:
Accepting Donations
Service Trip Sign-Up
Information About their Cause
Volunteer Sign-Up
Newsletter Sign-up
Original Website Pain Points
The following were some of the pain points identified during initial evaluation and user testing:
My Redesign
Some of my solutions to identified pain points:
Redesign Impact
According to non-profit leadership, when comparing 8 months before and after the redesign:
The Process: Phase 1 Design Sprint
Audience
After examining the profiles of 12 frequent interactors with Find Your Path’s social media posts, I discovered the following patterns:
83%
30-40 years old
58%
live in Utah
91%
mothers
72%
members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
User Interviews
I conducted user interviews with 3 potential users. Interviews uncovered pain points mentioned above.
Users were asked to do 3 key tasks:
Sign up for a service trip
Donate
Subscribe to their newsletter
Research on Donations
Non-profit leadership wanted to offer incentives to donors, hoping it would help encourage donations.
So, I explored research into factors that encourage people to donate to charities.
My Question: Does offering incentives, such as a free t-shirt, increase donations?
Answer: Generally no.
Studies suggest that offering incentives may undermine donors' motivation and altruistic intentions.
However, there are a few exceptions, the most relevant being offering tax deductions to donors.
So, I made sure the website included references to tax deductions for donors.
References: 1. Demotivating incentives 2. Donor incentives 3. Competition in Charitable Giving
Prototype
Keeping the information I gathered in mind as well as guidelines requested by leadership, I created a prototype that incorporated the following:
Streamlined navigation
Clear and concise messaging
Clear calls-to-action
Visual support and interest
Consistent tone
Standard non-profit design practices
Find Your Path Mission’s leadership approved the design with only minor changes and had their developer build the site based on my design.
I accomplished everything from initial research to creating a high-fidelity prototype on a strict 6-week timeline.
Industry Standards
I analyzed several established non-profit websites with similar causes and found the following similarities. I incorporated these features into the new design:
1. A short statement summarizing the organization's purpose displayed prominently.
2. A hero image representing the demographic it serves.
3. Donation buttons were prominent and brightly colored.
4. Donation pages were simple and straightforward. They were free of anything that might distract from the donation process.
Sketch for homepage design incorporating typical non-profit elements.
Sketch for donation page design.
Phase 2: Ongoing Improvements
Once the developer built the website Find Your Path Mission, Find Your Path’s leadership assumed responsibility for updating and expanding the website using its content management system.
However, after a few months, they struggled with juggling their non-profit, maintaining the website, and designing new pages.
So, I officially joined their team to make continuous improvements, build new pages, and fix details that were missed during the initial build.
Further User Testing
I have continued to conduct user research using the new website design:
Surveys
I posted surveys to several Facebook groups with interests related to Find Your Path’s cause to gauge interest and collect more data on its audience.
I collected information from the surveys to put together a more precise picture of what the non-profit’s potential audience was like.
Some of the raw survey results
User Interviews
I selected 4 people who fit audience demographics and had expressed interest in Find Your Path to conduct further user interviews.
I asked them to do 4 tasks, highlighted as the most important tasks by non-profit leadership:
1. Understand and describe Find Your Path Mission’s goal
2. Sign-up for a service trip
3. Donate
4. Subscribe to the Newsletter
User Interviews uncovered the following:
New design received positively: Users reported that it looked professional, trustworthy, and easy to use overall.
Non-profit’s purpose more clear: Users could now tell that the website was for a school for at-risk youth.
Still some problems with lengthy messaging: Content still needed to be edited further in some areas.
Clearer calls-to-action: Users had no trouble donating or finding the service trip sign-up.
Confusing service trip sign-up forms: Due to a strict budget, the developer did not code the sign-up forms, so non-profit leadership used Google Forms as an alternative.
However, the way it was written was overly long and confusing. Most users abandoned this task.
Confusion about costs: There was confusion about the difference between volunteering and a service trip, which required fees.
Card Sort
Leadership wanted to incorporate some new options into navigation that wouldn’t fit into established categories.
Also, “Volunteer” and “Service Trips” possibly needed to be separated to avoid confusion about why service trips required fees and volunteering didn’t.
So, I conducted a card sort to reorganize the site’s navigation using Optimal Sort.
Results
Keeping new information gathered in mind as well as requests from leadership, I have continued to update the website, incorporating my findings, including:
Even more concise messaging
Separating volunteering and service trips into separate categories to lessen confusion about costs associated with service trips
Re-organizing global navigation to align with card sort findings
Highlighting the region's safety Find Your Path resides (Safety was named as the number 1 concern in surveys by potential service trip bookers)
Before: Find Your Path’s old website
After: Find Your Path’s new website
What I Learned
The first hi-fidelity protoype was created on a tight 6-week timeline while attending university classes. So, I was limited in what I could accomplish that quickly. I started with desktop designs, but ran out of time for designing responsive versions of most pages. In the future, I’ll prioritize mobile-first design, knowing more users access the internet on their phones.
This was my first time handing off a design to a developer. Although the process went well overall, some details of my design were missing in the initial live version. While I provided notes, I realized I could have explained the importance of certain elements more clearly and should have asked to speak directly to the developer. (I was later granted access to fix some of these things directly.)
Lastly, while I had already edited the site’s copy considerably, I later recognized the need to streamline content further– subsequent user testing revealed that there were still overly wordy passages.
Following an overall successful website redesign that boosted donations and service trip sign-ups, I am now turning my attention to refining the service trip and volunteer sign-up forms. I plan to integrate lessons learned so far into these and future enhancements to ensure continued success for the non-profit.