City Year is a corps of volunteers making a difference in communities throughout the U.S. In addition to its main website, www.cityyear.org, City Year also has 19 microsites maintained by local chapters.
City Year knew its Web presence needed to be stronger: They didn’t have as many visits to the site as they expected, and users who visited the site weren’t staying long. They also had feedback that users who were coming to the site looking for specific information weren’t able to find it easily, if at all. There was an added challenge of the differently designed microsites, which weren’t consistently carrying through the design or brand image of the main site.
City Year engaged eXperient to redesign the main site to increase the organization’s Web presence; to enhance the organization’s brand awareness; and to better engage and service volunteers, donors, and the general public. City Year also wanted to extend design changes to the microsites in way that they would give the local chapter the flexibility in the design to meets its own needs while clearly conveying the relationship to the main site and the brand.
Solution
The redesign was a success that exceeded even City Year’s expectations.
One year after the redesign, City Year found significant jumps in unique visits, average time spent on the site, and pages viewed, as well as a reduction the bounce rate (the rate at which users abandoned the site at the home page). Usability testing indicated that users were able to find information quickly and easily using the redesigned architecture and navigation scheme.
