We worked with a state agency raising awareness about child abuse and neglect to create a new responsive website, informative content, and an improved donation process.
The Ohio Children’s Trust Fund (OTFC) has a very simple goal to prevent child abuse and neglect through investing in strong communities, healthy families and safe children. To help achieve this goal, the OCTF provides funding for community programs, and resources and education to parents, care givers, and professionals who aid these families.
Unfortunately, the design of the existing website made it difficult for visitors to find the information and resources that they needed. In addition, the site did not allow the OCTF to customize their pages and content to meet the unique needs of their partners. As a result, the OTFC set out to redesign and launch a new site that would address these shortcomings and optimize the online experience, as well as delivering a stronger brand narrative that would communicate the agency’s story in a holistic way through written and video content.
As a state agency, the OCTF had the option to build its new site on the Innovate Ohio Platform. The agency chose to work with g2o because we had prior experience working with this unique platform as well as the in-house design, content, SEO, and technology expertise to guide them through creating a new responsive website. In addition, the agency wanted us to create a series of three short videos to raise brand awareness.
Since the launch of the new website, the agency has reported receiving its first unsolicited online donations, which is one measure of success for the project.
We started by meeting with the OCTF to fully understand what they wanted to accomplish with the project. We learned that a primary goal was to increase awareness of the services they provide and easy access to available classes, trainings, and donation opportunities.
Also, the agency wanted help creating a better brand narrative for itself on its website so that people could better understand its mission to prevent child abuse and neglect. That included a more “nonprofit”look and feel to the site.
Our team conducted hands-on workshops with the OCTF staff, board members, and partners to understand their mission, operations, unique needs and expectations. We also conducted and analyzed an online survey of parents in the audience group the OCTF wanted to reach with the new site to understand how they find and consume information about parenting. We used the insights from these workshops and the survey to recommend what content was needed, how it should be organized, and how it should be written to best convey the OCTF’s desired brand narrative.
Once approved, our team began design and build of the new site using the state’s Innovate Ohio Platform. We were also responsible for developing approximately 65 pages of web content, including all copy, and video.
Along the way, we also were asked to evaluate the OCTF’s donation process on its existing website and to make recommendations for improvement. We analyzed their donations page from both the user experience and content perspectives, and on the new site provided a streamlined experience and enhanced storytelling about why a state agency seeks donations and how those donations support efforts to prevent child abuse.
Finally, the team provided training and technical support to the agency staff on how to edit, update, and create new pages.
The new website is helping OCTF achieve its mission by increasing awareness of the services available to Ohio families and partners. The easy access to education and training has expanded the reach of quality care so that more children get the support they need.
The new interface simplifies the donation process to help the agency diversify its funding sources with an enhanced mix of private and public money. Ultimately, that helps ensure that these families and programs get the funding they need.
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