Monthly Archives May 2017

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, Millennium Medical Publishing, and Goya Foods. Our talented teams of designers, developers, and account executives have collaborated to produce final products worth checking out. Read on to hear about our latest projects and the challenges we met along the way.

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is committed to alleviating the suffering caused by mental illness by awarding grants that will lead to advances in scientific research. The organization tasked us with telling their story with greater clarity, and more compelling, artful engagement. Their goal was to think of new and better ways to display information and to improve the donor flow on their existing site. We began by conducting audience research and performing a content audit to ensure content supported goals, added value, and targeted the correct audience. We then developed 10 user flows, enabling us to group and prioritize content and site functionality according to the site’s most frequent visitors. This informed the direction we took on the site redesign, with a modern visual interface and optimized touch points including page leads, video, navigation, and donation opportunities to drive engagement. Our research led us to discover that users were primarily visiting the site to gather information on mental illness. Because of this, we worked to illuminate the compelling science and transformative research of the BBR Foundation through elevated online communications and a blog. The modernized design and site architecture along with improved content development led to a highly immersive web and user experience.

The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science

The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops funding for and educates the public on the Weizmann Institute of Science, a research institution located in Israel. We’ve worked to update their website using the Umbraco content management system in order to tell a better story, engage more people, and to facilitate donations. Because the Committee’s work is so widespread, we concepted a site architecture that would establish a hierarchy with six different achievement buckets:

• Fighting Cancer
• Advancing Technology
• Enriching Education
• Protecting Our Planet
• Improving Health and Medicine
• Exploring the Physical World

We designed the corresponding iconography to help tell the story of the Committee’s ongoing solutions to the respective causes. An important goal for the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science was to simplify the fundraising process and to encourage more donations. Donors prefer giving money when they know exactly where their donation will be going. Because the Committee’s causes were so differentiated, we created project-based fundraisers to bring clarity to each individual cause. Project-based fundraising allows users to set up fundraisers in Crowdrise so users can donate to their project of choice — from cancer research to energy innovations. Project Toolkits walk users through the steps needed to support a cause that matters, then to invite friends and colleagues to join the cause through peer-to-peer fundraising. The new site tells a compelling narrative that attracts donors and encourages cause-driven donations.

Millennium Medical Publishing, Inc.

MMP is a medical publishing company with more than 40 years combined experience in the publishing field, with a specific focus on hematology and oncology, and gastroenterology and hepatology. We set out to design a responsive WordPress website that leads with content and offers a clean and simple user experience. Site visitors select the issue they’d like to explore (Hematology & Oncology or Gastroenterology & Hepatology) then browse through content from the latest issue. Both sites make it easy to explore the magazine’s archives and supplements, with a simple navigation and straightforward display of articles. We designed the new sites with the user in mind, so content can be consumed and discoverable on the MMP site.

Goya

The culture of food and family is meant to be shared. When we dove deep into the Goya heritage, we found true emotional currency not just in the rich culinary traditions but also in the desire to share these traditions with the world. We built a comprehensive online recipe catalog to drive social sharing, repeat website visits and encourage product sampling. We migrated Goya to the Umbraco CMS to allow for simple monthly updates by site managers. Images of delicious food cater to digital appetites, and quick and easy recipes help household chefs find tonight’s mealtime inspiration. Additionally, we improved recipe and product backend architecture to encourage recipe/product cross referencing. The Goya experience packages useful information – recipes, product details, and interactive shopping lists for busy, on-the-go users. Vibrant social platforms, promotions, coupons, and contests offer enticing rewards and drive traffic to all digital hubs. We’re pleased to have these websites completed and are excited for the projects to come. If you’d like to discuss a project with a Flightpath representative, feel free to reach out here.]]>

Increasing user retention

Lowering bounce rate

Employing a modern, responsive design

With these goals in mind, we set out to create a plan to leverage the brand’s existing digital presence to achieve their goals with a cross-functional platform just as diverse as the brand itself.

The Umbraco CMS

At Flightpath, we’re Umbraco Gold partners, meaning we have a number of developers and designers in-house who are experts on the Umbraco content management system. We selected Umbraco over other CMSs in order to provide the client with the simplest editor experience. The Goya site is a 1:1 multilingual site, so for every piece of English content on the site, there’s a Spanish translation. We were able to do this with the Vorto property editor, an Umbraco package that allows fields to store multilingual content. For SEO purposes, we decided to host this on a single domain with subdirectories for each language.

An optimized user experience

To improve UX and increase engagement, we incorporated faceted search with suggestions into the site, allowing users to explore information by applying filters. We implemented this by integrating Umbraco with Azure Search, a cloud search service. With the site’s extensive content and design features, we wanted to ensure it would load quickly, so we put the entire site (rather than just the media) behind a content delivery network. Moving the site to a CDN also ensured a speedy site for a primarily North American audience despite Umbraco Cloud hosting from Europe. Additionally, we used the ASP.NET Identity Umbraco package and OWIN middleware to enable Facebook and Google authentication for a simplified user experience. Users are now able to create an account to receive offers and save recipes with the click of a button.

Creating evangelists

One of Goya’s primary goals was to increase user retention. Many users were one-time visitors, so we wanted to create an experience that would turn one-time users into loyal customers. We added to the experience by syncing products with recipes to allow users to search by product. For example, a user could search for salad recipes that incorporated chicken and rice. The easy-to-use search capabilities encouraged users to surf the site for recipe information according to ingredients they already had.

Encouraging engagement

Prior to the redesign, the website had a relatively high bounce rate. Users were visiting the site for a recipe, printing it out, then exiting the site. While Goya was happy to be a trusted recipe source, we knew there was an opportunity to engage site visitors to stay longer and explore the site’s other offerings. Our product/recipe syncing encouraged users to explore other recipes with similar ingredients. The website’s featured recipes section showcases the recipe’s main ingredient to provide further product information and cross reference other recipes. We also added a ratings and reviews section that’s encouraged users to engage with the recipe and product content. Social media integrations allow users to share Goya recipes and blog posts with friends and family.

The end result

The new site offers parallax scrolling and bright, colorful imagery sure to make any site visitor hungry. Migrating Goya’s site to the Umbraco CMS greatly reduces the time it takes the client to update content, and we’ve already seen a steep decline in bounce rate after making these adjustments to the site. The end result is a dynamic, multi-faceted initiative that tells the Goya story in a fashion that’s rich, fun, informative, and engaging.]]>