Palo Alto Partners in Education

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new no profit website for education organization

“It was an easy and seamless process. Went much faster, smoother and easier than I expected!”

Palo Alto Partners In Education Client on the process of working with Design TLC

Partners in Education (PiE) raises money from parents and the community to provide all Palo Alto Unified School District students an educational experience beyond what is possible with public funding.

Design TLC inherited website maintenance for Palo Alto Partners in Education (PAPIE) in early 2019. The website was built with WordPress and was functional, but needed some updates and eventually, a refresh would be needed.

old papie website
Old PAPIE Home Page

New PAPIE website design
New Home Page for PAPIE

Client Portal

We use a Client Portal for new website projects. This is where clients can access all elements of their website project throughout the process. The initial proposal, invoice receipts, schedules, content documents, wireframe and design prototypes and more are all in one place. This makes project management go smoothly.

Design TLC Client Portal

We loved working with PAPIE staff, who were really engaged in the process, proactive and responsive! We look forward to continuing to support them with ongoing website maintenance and updates.

Objective

  • Improve the user experience and content organization for both visitors and Palo Alto Partners in Education (PAPIE) staff.
  • Redesign the outdated website creating a modern, visually appealing layout with a clear call to action and improved usability.
  • Streamline and improve the donation process.

Approach

  • We installed Beaver Builder Page Builder and created a more updated, user-friendly design with a compelling headline and singular call to action.
  • We enhanced the website with some custom post types, including functionality to easily add and display participating schools in Palo Alto.
  • We also helped create custom functionality with Gravity Forms donation forms to include a formula to add fee recovery and supplemental donation. Users need to select a donation method before beginning the donation process. PAPIE relies on eChecks as a primary donation platform, as this method has almost no fees using Forte. We talked to GiveWP about integrating with Forte, as adding eCheck payments with low fees to the GiveWP plugin would be really helpful to improve the user experience. Until that integration exists, we are continuing to use Gravity Forms, which works fine.
  • We helped organize the content for PAPIE to improve the user experience, both for website visitors and for the PAPIE staff for adding content. The individual school content is housed in a custom post type, which allows PAPIE staff to add and edit content and keep it consistent for all schools.
  • The different news sections are also organized by categories to display specific content types from the main News page.
  • We created a user-friendly subpage navigation in a horizontal blue bar, which makes it easier to navigate between pages within each section, even on mobile.

Outcome

  • The Palo Alto Partners in Education (PAPIE) website now provides a better user experience for both visitors and staff, with improved content organization and management.
  • Custom post types streamline the addition and editing of school-specific content, ensuring consistency across all schools.
  • News sections are now categorized, making it easier to find and display relevant updates.
  • Custom Gravity Forms donation functionality simplifies the donation process, incorporating fee recovery and supplemental donation calculations.
  • The new website design, built with Beaver Builder, features a modernized layout, an engaging call to action, and improved visual presentation for a more polished and effective fundraising platform.