Non-Profit Children's Book Bank Website
Case Study
Anna’s Books is on a mission to increase literacy in children in Western North Carolina by providing free books to children and teachers in the region. After recently settling into a brick and mortar, they came to me to develop their online presence to drive donations and increase awareness and community involvement.
Objectives
Further the mission of Anna’s Books through the creation of a website that would build trust with the community, drive donations, increase foot traffic to the brick and mortar, and increase book and monetary donations.
Target Audience
Teachers in Western North Carolina
Parents in Western North Carolina
WNC community members looking for volunteer opportunities
Design Thinking
Branding
Beyond the logo, there was no established branding and I was given creative liberty within the bounds of the website being, “happy, not sad, and clearly a children’s program”.
I chose to develop a friendly, spring pastel color palette. I chose a serif font for headings, as serif fonts are implicitly linked to books, and a sans-serif font for body copy, as it is easy to read.
UX
The navigation was kept as straightforward as possible with only home, About, Get Involved, Contact, and Donate Pages.
At the bottom of each page the user is directed to a different part of the website, keeping them from bouncing off the page. It is important to show users where you want them to go next on their user journey.
Unfortunately, the client has to accept donations through Haywood County Schools Foundation’s PayPal and so the user has to indicate in the “notes to seller” field that the donation is for Anna’s Books. This creates less than ideal UX, as it will confuse and be too complicated for many target users, and I told my client they need to have their own PayPal as soon as possible to reduce the clicks and mental load it takes to donate. For now, the donate button takes the user to the donate page where there is written and video instructions on how to make a donation. In the future this button should take the user to a new tab where they can donate directly to Anna’s Books’ PayPal.
The footer houses the location and hours of the brick-and-mortar; this is an intuitive location for this information.
Recognizing the importance of a mobile-friendly website, as many visitors will find this website from Google Maps, I ensured that the new design was fully responsive. I implemented responsive layouts and optimized the site’s elements to adapt seamlessly to different devices and screen sizes. The website was also checked for accessibility compliance using AccessiBe to ensure that not only could all people of all abilities use it, but it would not be docked in the search engine results page due to accessibility errors.
Design Process
After an initial phone call with the client, a questionnaire was issued to understand the founder’s goals and vision for this website. Keyword research was conducted to determine what would help the site rank in search engine results pages.
I collected and optimized the client’s images, then sourced free images as needed. I scoured the existing Facebook page to help understand how the client was interacting with her audience. I developed a wireframe and wrote all the content to accompany it.
The client needed to establish herself as an authority in the field, so I included statistics about children’s literacy and how Anna’s Books works to improve it. I also included CTAs to drive donations and volunteers and testimonials to bolster social proof and encourage more teachers to stock their classrooms with Anna’s Books. On the About page, I detailed what Anna’s Books does for the community and the story of how Anna’s Books came to be so users could help connect with the mission and this particular book bank.
Challenges
The logo was pre-existing and the client wanted it to be the hero image, so I overlaid it on a stock image of colorful children’s books to give it more visual impact.
The client does not want to maintain a blog or newsletter, preferring to reach her target audience via the Facebook group. Blogs are the easiest way to update websites (and appease the SERP algorithm) so I will be updating the pages with new photos and volunteer opportunities instead. Newsletters are the best way to reach users, but instead of a newsletter sign-up CTA I made Facebook CTAs.
A paid WordPress theme was not in the budget so I utilized the free 24 theme. I customized it as much as I could, breaking from the established color palette choices and often creating my own layouts.
Many of the client’s photos were low quality and not taken with a smartphone or professional camera. I used sourced images for hero images, and kept the client’s images small to not draw attention to their resolution. Luckily, there were some high-quality images on the Facebook page.
As mentioned in the UX section above, Anna’s Books doesn’t have their own PayPal at the moment and donations are routed through the school systems’s PayPal, users must indicate in the “notes to seller” that the donation should go to Anna’s Books. This will confuse many in our target audience; it will be too many clicks and steps to donate, or it will seem illegitimate. For now, the donate button takes the user to the donate page where they are given and shown instructions on how to donate.
Testimonial
“Recently Natalie made a website for my small non-profit. This was a completely new experience for me and Natalie guided me through each step of the process. She took the extra time and care to listen and truly understand the mission of our program. She worked closely with me to make sure the page was exactly the way I wanted. The end result was beautiful, polished, and exceeded my expectations. Natalie was professional, knowledgeable, kind, and easy to work with. I would highly recommend Natalie and look forward to working with her in the future on all my website needs.”
-Dana Smith, Founder
