Growth: Page Views
The Need.
In 2015, the State Policy Network (SPN) was fresh off a rebrand. They needed a website to match their new look and elevate their brand for members and the general public.
SPN needed a vendor who could offer brand integration, strategic guidance, an innovative approach, and the willingness to maximize their nonprofit budget.
The Process.
Engage built SPN a stunning site that launched in 2016. Having proven ourselves as not just a vendor, but a partner, Engage has had an ongoing relationship with SPN to deliver digital solutions ever since. We took the same principles that guided our original website build and built out an entire digital hub.
Wireframes
A staple of the Engage process is wireframing. During this phase, our team lays out the templates that will make up the site. Akin to the blueprints of a building, wireframes are the first time the site is visually represented. The goal is to establish a hierarchy of information and the layout of a page. Our team prefers to keep wireframes imageless and in grayscale with simple typography to keep the focus on the architecture. To accompany wireframes, Engage always includes functionality notes to help explain how the site will work and what’s editable, to leave notes for developers, and to ask clarifying questions of the client. For SPN, Engage went a step further and created clickable wireframes to simulate how their member portal would work.
Homepage
Engage has now designed two homepages for SPN—the first in 2016 with the launch of the site and again in 2018 when SPN wanted to incorporate more of their new features on the homepage. First and foremost, the new homepage needed to acquaint those who did not know SPN with the organization; the homepage begins with a video roll and a colorful About section, using both words and visuals to encapsulate the non-profit. Other homepage elements include: the SPN directory, which shows their membership across the country, the organization’s most pressing issues, news from the local level, news from the national level, jobs in their network, and their featured programs.
Directory
The State Policy Network members fall into two different groups. Affiliates are state-based think tanks, focusing on policy on the state and local level, while their associate members are working on similar issues on a national level. To visualize their membership, our team built an interactive map to act as the directory of all SPN members. On this directory page, the map enables users to look up members by state. It also provides a printer friendly listing of the directory for those who need it. Since SPN members are the lifeblood of the organization, it should come as no surprise that this page often vies with the homepage for most visited page on the site.
Annual Meeting
SPN’s biggest event of the year is their Annual Meeting. Hosted at a different major U.S. city every year, the Annual Meeting converges all of SPN’s membership for training, sharing of ideas, and networking. It was paramount that we build them a template that could be used year after year to act as a landing page for all things Annual Meeting. SPN’s marketing efforts point users to this page so that users can see information on the agenda, speakers, accommodations, event awards, opportunities for sponsorships, how to become an exhibitor, the event app, FAQs, and pathways to register. Due to the amount of content, the landing page needed to be robust while still being flexible enough to change year after year.
Landing Page Builder
Another iterative feature of SPN.org is the landing page builder. The communications staff at SPN noticed that they had more and more requests to show off their different policy initiatives. The desired content for a policy initiative widely varied and the communications staff was having a hard time making landing pages that could be flexible and look good at the same time. Our team designed and built a template that was highly customizable. Admins could choose from various “blocks” to display the information they wanted—in the order they wanted it. Blocks included text, icons, images, news posts, video, logos, interactive maps, and a sign up bar. Communications staff could mix and match these blocks, change the layout and create custom navigation items depending on their needs.
Member Portal
Engage continues to build out the SPN member portal. Behind this password protected area of the site, members can access proprietary information and perform a host of actions, including renewing their membership and updating their organization’s information. There is also a “People Connector,” or a digital rolodex, which allows users to look up other members in the network by title, organization, or areas of expertise, and it provides their contact information. Message boards provide a place for policy experts and development specialists alike to exchange ideas. Training materials allow members to hone their skills, and toolkits provide new employees and website veterans the resources to succeed across career channels. The portal also empowers users to submit their job openings and news updates to SPN, who reviews them, and then, once approved, publishes them directly to the front end of the site.
The Solution.
For a project of this scale and timeframe, there is seldom one solution. However, there is an overarching theme: iterative development. Every time a new request comes in, our team goes through our “define → design → build → test” process to come up with a new solution. But launching a new feature is just the beginning; it’s the entry point to collecting more data. By developing a solution, putting it out in the world and evaluating how users interact with it, we created a system that tests our assumptions and builds a better product.
The Result.
Year after year, site visitors continue to grow and mobile traffic has spiked significantly with a mobile-optimized design. Beyond metrics, the new site provides a stunning interface for the media, donors, and the public to interact with SPN while their other key audience, members, are given special access to proprietary information.