Big Bend Conservancy’s mission is to promote, protect, and raise funds for Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande River. To date, Big Bend Conservancy has raised over $3.8 million for the park.
Big Bend Conservancy wanted a fresh website design– something that highlighted their photos in a big and bold way, while finding clean and simple ways to encourage visitors to attend events, donate to the organization, and explore the park offerings further.
What are website visitors looking for?
First we analyzed their website structure: the “parent” links at the top of website and their “children” in the drop-down menus. We wanted to ensure that the most visited webpages were readily available and in an easy-to-find location. The home page uses buttons placed in strategic areas to direct website visitors to the most important information.
TELLING A STORY THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
Lauren selected impactful photos to ignite the viewer’s sense of adventure and create excitement around Big Bend Conservancy’s mission of supporting the park. The slideshow buttons were put in place to encourage visitors to visit the four most important pages in the website.
As website visitors scroll down the home page, they continue to learn more about The Conservancy through both text and photos. Our custom built website “back end” (where you edit your website) allows Big Bend to easily change the text and photos on every page on their website - within seconds.
Promoting key information
Featured projects are automatically displayed on the home page so visitors can quickly see and understand the impact The Conservancy has on the park and how they use the funds they raise. Lauren ensured that the projects “pop” by placing them on a dark nightscape.
Illustrating the impact
The Projects page uses a grid of photos to illustrate the many efforts The Conservancy has made to benefit and preserve Big Bend National Park. Clicking one of the photos brings website visitors to a project page with more details. These pages allow the conservancy to easily provide recognition for top donors, while encouraging additional donations.
The footer
What on earth is a “footer”? It’s the term we web gurus use for the information that is displayed at the bottom of every website. If someone decides to scroll aaalllll the way down, we don’t want to leave them stranded with nothing to do! On The Conservancy’s website, we dynamically (aka automatically) display their upcoming events and also invite website visitors to sign up for Big Bend’s email list. Finally, we cap off the footer with prominent social media icons that link to their Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages.
ENCOURAGING DONATIONS
Because the organization is focused on promoting, protecting, and raising funds for Big Bend National Park, the donation page is a primary focus. The donate button has a special treatment in the upper right of every page, and we also added a special photo row on the home page to encourage visitors to learn more. On the donate page, we used beautiful photography in four chooser buttons to illustrate four different ways to support Big Bend National Park. Clicking one of the buttons leads to a new page with more details on how to support the park.
