Front-End Design, User Profiles, Content Restructure

BC Search & Rescue Association (BCSARA) needed an entire revamp of their old website which totalled 195 pages not including blog posts.

TEVWEB Marketing met, biweekly via Zoom, with BCSARA and AdventureSmart executives to complete this project and streamline it from 195 pages down to 19 within three months. The communication on this project was outstanding!

User Profiles

First, I created user profiles to better understand the types of visitors that would be visiting the site and the purpose for their visit. This is an important step in understanding what content is most important and how to organize it within the website.

For example, one user profile was ‘A Potential Volunteer’. BCSARA was receiving a ton of phone calls from people looking to volunteer even though that information was on their existing website. We made that information more prominent on the landing page and in the main navigation so visitors could easily find it. This saved BCSARA a lot of time!

Site Map Creation

I also created a site map of the existing website so we could better see the size and structure of it. This was also useful in deciding which content to keep and which content to discard. Then, a new sitemap was created to outline how content within the new website would be organized.

Why Content Organization Is Important

From an organization’s perspective, the purpose of website copy is to lead visitors to take action. From a visitor’s perspective, information needs to be fast and easy to find otherwise they leave.

How content is structured and organized makes for a better user experience. For example, a clear navigational structure, headings, calls to action, and buttons help users easily and quickly find what they are looking for.

For example, we knocked off 79 pages right away. Having a page for each of the 79 SAR teams wasn’t neccesary. Instead, we linked directly to the individual SAR web pages from a map of BC. This now puts users looking to volunteer directly in touch with their SAR team of interest. Furthermore, this saves BCSARA the time of updating those pages.

The Design

BCSARA gave me two website examples that they liked and explained what they liked about them. This made it easy for me to design the look they were going for.

The Outcome