How We Built a New User-Friendly Nonprofit Website
Converting the Website from Drupal to WordPress
The League of American Bicyclists’ previous website was built on the Drupal platform. The design was out of date and was not very user-friendly. To improve the user experience for front and back end website users, we converted the website to WordPress, a more flexible and user-friendly content management system.
Consistent, Updated Branding Elements
The League has a comprehensive Branding Style Guide. We honored the brand fonts and colors to maintain consistency. We created a horizontal version of the logo which is more readable. The logo is a wheel with the name League of American Bicyclists wrapped around it, making it hard to read, and taking up a lot of vertical space in the header. The new logo has the same wheel icon, and breaking out the name was a good improvement without damaging the brand. The style guide also refers to a “hanging flag,” a vertical section which contains their logomark and should be hanging from the top edge. This was used for the website navigation on the old website, which had no header area and the sidebar navigation was hard to use, because there is so much content on the site. We created a user-friendly header area, making navigation familiar for website users, and then maintained the left sidebar navigation for internal section menus from their old site to create some familiarity and consistency for users of the former website.
Custom Templates in Beaver Builder
We used custom templates in Beaver Builder to make it easy to create new pages and maintain consistency across the website. This allowed for a more streamlined website-building process, which was particularly important for a nonprofit website with a lot of content. We created a page template for each section of the website, which includes the proper sidebar internal navigation.
Adding Fun Animated SVG Graphics
To add a playful element to the website, we created animated SVG Lottie Files of bicycles riding across the page. This reinforces the League’s mission of promoting bicycling as a fun and healthy mode of transportation.
Creating a Custom Map Integrated with Salesforce
One of the key features of the new website is the map, which was custom-developed to integrate with Salesforce. The map shows the locations of League members and bike-friendly businesses across the country, and we made several improvements to make it more visually appealing and user-friendly. The old map was very cluttered with blurry icons and a filter that covered the map. There was a big blank area at the top of the page, and the map did not include bike trails.
Senior Developer Tom Ransom did an amazing job of thinking through every detail of the map process, including using the map API feature that displays the version of a map with bike lanes. The result is a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate map with filters, “Use My Location” and integration with the Bike Friendly America resources.
New website map page
Former website map page
Bicycle Friendly Award Database Map on New Website
(click image to view live webpage)
Meticulous Content Transfer
The League’s old website had content going back to 2010, so it was important to be detail-oriented in transferring the content to the new website. Our team was meticulous in this process to ensure that the new website would be comprehensive and useful to users.
Supporting a Good Cause
Tara Claeys, the owner of Design TLC, has been involved in her local cycling community for many years and was thrilled to work with an organization that shares her passion for bicycle advocacy. Design TLC is proud to have created a nonprofit website that supports the League’s mission and makes it easier for people to get involved in promoting bicycle safety and accessibility.
Design TLC’s work on the League of American Bicyclists’ new website is a prime example of how we work with nonprofits to make the world a better place. By converting the website to WordPress, using custom templates in Beaver Builder, integrating with Salesforce, and paying close attention to content transfer, Design TLC has created a user-friendly and comprehensive nonprofit website that supports the League’s mission of promoting bicycle safety and accessibility.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help your nonprofit improve your website.