United Way Of Greater Rochester website design and usability update

THE INTRO

For more than 100 years, United Way of Greater Rochester has focused on harnessing the power of collective giving to unite community members, businesses and local leaders in doing good as they raise their hands, open their hearts, and share resources to build a thriving region for all. They connect and support a broad network of human service organizations, community initiatives and innovative strategies to address the most pressing local challenges with real, impactful solutions.

THE CHALLENGE

There were multiple challenges, but in their totality, United Way needed to reinvent and reinvigorate their website. They came to Envative for help, because United Way recognized that their site was dated in its looks, technologies and usability. Nor did the site work properly on mobile devices or provide United Way with ways to reach important marketing goals—increasing page views, providing unique audience segments with targeted content, updating news items quickly, and developing an altogether more navigable site. And in the interest of saving additional costs, United Way’s team also wanted to learn how to update and maintain their own website.

THE GOAL

A new, more appealing and flexible website endowed with current technology and tools features Envative’s SmarterCMS solution, which leverages design and content management expertise with the powerful and robust Kentico CMS platform. To get there, the Envative design team carefully evaluated United Way’s long-term needs and objectives through collaborative meetings. The team also reviewed competitors’ and other industry sites to develop a highly functional and impactful design. Using Envative’s bi-weekly sprint meetings, existing content was progressively migrated to the new design. Sprint meetings also enabled United Way’s team to learn how to administer new content and maintain their new, multifunctional website.

THE SOLUTION

The Envative team, working in concert with United Way’s team, met all the challenges and more. Not only did Envative seamlessly transition United Way’s website to the new design, they also helped United Way meet its mission of promoting support from the community and increasing donations to the agency through the use of video, social media and events that tell the stories of all those the agency serves. United Way reports that SmarterCMS is a more user-friendly content-management tool that saves their team a lot of time and money, and allows them to maintain their own website for additional cost-savings over time.

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To the envative team – A hundred thousand thanks for all of your amazing work on United Way’s ROC the Day campaign this year. The complexities of the project, coupled with the fact that you had to adapt to and work with a code that was not built by you, made for a challenging endeavor. I am truly thankful to your team for taking on the challenges with expertise, professionalism, grace and humor when needed!

This event was the most successful to date. We couldn’t have achieved those results without an extremely hardworking and knowledgeable team behind us. I hope you’re proud of the effort that you put forth to bring this enormous community event to Rochester for its fifth year.