The previous NatureBridge website was not mobile-friendly nor responsive, leaving many visitors with a poor experience and impression of NatureBridge. Even on a large screen device the design felt dated, relying too heavily on text. The lack of photography was truly a missed opportunity because the National Parks in which NatureBridge operates provide stunning imagery as the backdrop for the educational experiences NatureBridge curates.
Functionally the website underperformed as well. Search within the site was poor, as was SEO intended to draw traffic from organic search. Donations pages were difficult to edit and customize, leaving the sales and marketing staff in a troubling position as they tried to promote events and programs. NatureBridge found themselves needing to spin up third party microsites to accomplish what they really needed their own website to support.
The NatureBridge website is a key part of the organization's ability to attract program registrants and partners, encourage donations and sponsorships, and enhance their own reputation and promote their mission. They needed a new website to better deliver on those outcomes.
Fundamental to the success of this project was an effective partnership between the three parties involved: NatureBridge (the client), Blue State Digital (who handled content strategy and design), and Kalamuna (who handled prototyping, coding, deployment, and support). With three partners collaborating, good teamwork and communication becomes even more important. To that end, we developed a working relationship that not only worked, but built upon each team’s specific expertise.
As a primary goal, NatureBridge required their programs to be findable and appealing to site visitors. Blue State worked to improve the information architecture so that content was organized in a more intuitive fashion. They also made dramatic design improvements to the program pages, leveraging NatureBridge’s stunning photography to add genuine appeal to each page.
Building upon Blue State’s design work, Kalamuna was able to build rapid prototypes of the designs utilizing our Kalastatic prototyping tools. Kalastatic allowed us to quickly demonstrate for NatureBridge, not only what the designs would look like as an actual webpage, but how the pages would adjust responsively to different browser widths and screen sizes. NatureBridge was able to test the prototypes of their designs before they were implemented into the content management system.
Another key to NatureBridge’s ongoing success was developing a flexible, sustainable, and extensible set of tools to avoid over-reliance on external services to supplement their website’s limitations.
Leveraging the unique strengths of Drupal 8, Kalamuna was able to give NatureBridge greater flexibility with page layouts and designs throughout the site. Drupal 8, along with a refined content architecture, also provided a better search experience within the site, as well as better SEO results from external searches.
Thinking ahead, Kalamuna configured NatureBridge’s implementation of Drupal 8 so that a future integration of Salesforce would be possible, giving NatureBridge the potential for even more sophisticated sales and marketing interactions online.
In short, Kalamuna delivered the robust and powerful platform NatureBridge desired. The effects of its improved efficiency and flexibility were immediately apparent as NatureBridge began to work with flowing content into the site. The ease of use, beauty, and simplicity of the design speak for themselves.
NatureBridge now has a website worthy of its brand and mission.
