Building a new online presence for a local Minnesota food shelf.
The Project
Over time the propfood.com website became a bloated, unnavigable mess. There were pages missing from the navigation hierarchy and duplicate content, making it easy for users to get lost. They often had difficulty finding up-to-date information they needed to work with and use the food shelf. The internal Prop Food team also didn’t know which pages needed to be edited in order to make the most updated and relevant content accessible to users. In addition to the hierarchy and navigation issues, the site needed to be responsive with a refreshed look.
IA & Content Audit
The first step was to navigate the current site, track flows to key user actions, and document the existing sitemap. We then investigated high-level issues like incomplete pages, broken links, and inconsistent terminology. After the site audit we redefined the site structure to focus on key content and messaging, to make the site easier to navigate and the right information easier to find.
Sitemap, Wireframes, and Templates
After going through the IA and content audit we put together an initial sitemap. The goal of the new sitemap was to consolidate all the duplicate static content into a single-level navigation and highlight the main interactions we wanted users to perform: donate, partner, volunteer, and get help. Alongside that, we built a robust blog with the proper categories to make the site easy to update and to surface new and relevant content.
Visual Design
We wanted an engaging and unique visual design that would give the site a modern, up-to-date feel. We used existing team images and some free stock photos to create a distinctive featured image with a paintbrush background for each main page header.
Development
We used the WordPress CMS to display and house the content, giving the team an easy and familiar platform to update the site’s content and functionality over time.