Overview: At the start of 2023, the EWB-MN Professional Chapter agreed it was time for a website redesign as it had been quite a few years since the last website had been updated and as an active and growing chapter our current website was not being used to its full capacity.
The original website functioned as a landing page for potential volunteers to get to know EWB-MN and as a way for new volunteers to get in contact with the chapter. Besides that, the projects were out of date and unorganized, there was no way to see what was currently happening with the chapter, and besides filling out a general contact form for the chapter there was no way for new volunteers to find out how they could get involved and what kind of opportunities were available.
Goals: Our goal with the new website was to provide all of the same information as the old website but provide clearer ways for potential volunteers to get involved and have a better idea of what EWB does and how our specific chapter operates. We also wanted to make it easier for our different teams to provide updates on their current projects and make it easier to promote those updates on our social media pages.
Before starting the website redesign, I first looked at other EWB chapters' websites to see how they were designed, how those chapters used their websites, along with any pros or cons.
Then I started to determine what pages we would like for the website and how they should be organized before starting to design a rough layout in AdobeXD.
Once there was a general idea for the layout and page ideas, I started creating the final project of our website using WIX website builder. After many months of development and revisions with the chapter, the website was complete.
On the old homepage, most of the visual space before the fold was taken up by one picture with information about projects and donors following after. While this information was important, it was also easily accessible from the menu bar and wasn't essential for the homepage of the website.
In the final design, we decided to keep it simple, showcasing our chapter achievements with revolving photos and having a section slightly above the fold highlighting our latest chapter updates. All other information is neatly organized in the menu bar.
We improved our Projects pages to distinguish between older and current projects and also gave each project its own webpage. This would make it easier for potential volunteers and donors to see our current projects with any latest updates provided by the teams as well as how they could donate to a specific project.
In the new website, the general 'Get Involved' page was taken away and replaced with a volunteer job board and an upcoming events page. This will allow new volunteers to see different opportunities that are currently available and/or go to our events page and see the upcoming events they can participate in.
