WHAT WAS THE PROJECT?
Website redesign for educational nonprofit focused on forming ethical and morally courageous leaders
Client: The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute
Project Summary
Redesigned the nonprofit’s site to match their new brand identity and show off their capabilities.
The Strategy
Lead with mission, bolster with services, support with facts. Showcase how they are achieving their mission front-and-center.
Results
Streamlined Content Design. Site now matches new brand identity and has eliminated redundancies.
Content Audit
Copywriting
Information Architecture
Experience Design
Responsibilities
MY ROLE IN THE CREATION OF TDBI SITE REDESIGN
User Research
Developed product strategy and conducted simple user research with executive leadership.
Experience Design
Designed interface, developed prototype, and iterated issues identified by the accessibility audit.
Content Design
Created and developed streamlined content design.
COMPANY OVERVIEW
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute (TDBI) forms, supports, and encourages ethical and morally courageous leaders to address the social crises of their time.
TDBI strives to create a world where ethical reflection is part of the process of religious, civic, and political engagement and is informed by the life and thoughts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
TDBI does this through:
Gun Violence Prevention
You Welcomed Me
The Virago Collective
COMPANY OVERVIEW
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute’s key programs are designed to provide direction for concrete action to turn ethical challenges into solutions.
Gun Violence Prevention
TDBI sees gun access, gun ownership, gun use, and gun violence as moral subjects in need of religious and ethical examination and action.
Virago Leadership Collective
Program’s purpose is to build a national coalition of women of faith with effective skills to support civic engagement for the betterment of women and their communities.
You Welcomed Me
A series of in-depth recorded conversations with top Christian leaders on topics pertaining to immigrants and refugees.
PROJECT SUMMARY
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute saw an opportunity to simplify and modernize their outdated website and improve user engagement through a website redesign… and it worked!
Key Success Metrics Since Redesign
67%
reduction in webpages
organic visits within one month of website redesign
330+
max. increase in traffic in a single month
55%
THE DESIGN PROCESS
I collaborated closely with a UX Designer, Web Developer, and Project Manager from research & discovery through launch of new site.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
We planned and conducted multiple remote interviews with TDBI executive director to understand who their users are and how they typically use their website.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
We conducted a Jobs-To-Be-Done task to understand TDBI’s core problems and needs and strategize ways to solve their main need – site simplification and clarity – as best as possible.
PRODUCT STRATEGY
The individual interviews and Jobs-To-Be-Done revealed design opportunities for TDBI.
“Redundant content is a seemingly harmless mistake to make… but over time, it saps your site’s SEO potential and gives your readers a poorer user experience.”
PRODUCT STRATEGY
We also created a sitemap to help visualize The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute’s site structure and understand more clearly how users would navigate through the simplified site.
The complication we experienced here was separating what was essential, what was redundant, and what would potentially be nice to include as they continue to develop.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Reverend Tobias is a religious leader who has heard about The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute from colleagues and wants to learn more about who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is and why he should follow his moral and theological lessons.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Reverend Tobias is a religious leader who has heard about The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute from colleagues and wants to learn more about who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is and why he should follow his moral and theological lessons.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Reverend Tobias is inspired by what he learns about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and wants to support TDBI after learning more about their work and resources.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Reverend Tobias is inspired by what he learns about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and wants to support TDBI after learning more about their work and resources.
CONTENT & INTERFACE DESIGN
Prior to our website redesign, TDBI had 8 pages listed in their navigation menu, 24 total pages, an excessively long footer, and an outdated design that no longer fit with their rebranding efforts.
CONTENT & INTERFACE DESIGN
We focused on communicating TDBI’s moral, ethical, and educational story with simplicity and with heart.
Here are the design changes we implemented: a parallax Hero Image with CTA inviting users to explore TDBI’s programs and resources, a drop-down hamburger navigation menu, a sticky Give Today button, and a hoverable (clickable on mobile) section on the Mission and Vision.
CONTENT & INTERFACE DESIGN
Redesigned Gun Violence Prevention, Immigration/You Welcomed Me, and Leadership Formation pages all provide clear context of what the program does and supplies users with helpful resources.
Here are the design changes we implemented: all program-specific resources are included in one centralized location and TDBI’s stance on such issues stated plainly.
PROTOTYPE, TEST, & ITERATE
Due to the limited timeframe we had to complete the website redesign for The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute, we opted to conduct an accessibility audit and directly fixed key design issues that were discovered.
OUTCOMES & LESSONS
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute’s redesigned website proved to be an organic source of new users, with a high of 367 organic visits in a single month.
Key Success Metrics Since Redesign
67%
reduction in webpages
organic visits within one month of website redesign
330+
maximum increase in traffic in a single month
55%
OUTCOMES & LESSONS
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute’s chic Bauhaus-inspired website and streamlined content design has delighted new users and encouraged burgeoning ethical and moral courageous leaders to address social, moral, and ethical crises.
Key Outcomes & Results
237 Referring Domains from other websites, over 50% of which are from other religious organizations or social justice organizations.
112 Organic Keywords to attract organic, free traffic through Search Engine Optimization.
Over 1.3k Backlinks, illustrating strong organizational legitimacy.
Positive Takeaways
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s redesigned website is a hit with the client and with new users.
Simplified navigational user experience of the website makes it more accessible to its target demographic of religious leaders between the ages of mid-20s to mid-60s.