Case Study: Non-Profit Website Rebuild & Ongoing Development

Non-profit Website Rebuild

Following their successful campaign for achieving a Sustainable Food Places Bronze Award for Sheffield, ShefFood (Sheffield’s Food Partnership) was looking to improve its comms strategy. To do this they needed to retire their old static site and rebuild the site to improve the usability for both visitors and staff. This redesign would ensure the website was a hub for all information on all things sustainable food in Sheffield

Challenges

The key challenges for ShefFood were that their old static non-profit website had no easy way to be updated. The site was built in simple HTML, and any updates or news needed to be added with the help of a developer, as there was no back-end framework for staff to use. This made it difficult to update. This type of site also meant no SEO work had been attempted, even on a basic level. A complicated infographic built-in code also needed to be moved to the new site.

Suggested Solutions

To make updates easier, in the long run, I recommended rebuilding the site in WordPress. This would provide staff with an easy-to-access back end, create a standardised way to blog and allow for SEO and UX best practices to be applied.

The ShefFood brand was well recognised, so the new website needed to reflect the brand guidelines. So, the website design was recreated to match the initial website very closely but was updated to abide to be UX practices and a more modern design style.

Implementation

We had several meetings to develop the redesign of the website. While we intended to match the content and design as closely as possible for continuity, we agreed on various improvements for the new iteration of the website. Pages were extended to make better use of white space, increase use of imagery and create extra areas for a copy. I successfully moved the complex infographic to the new site (though this aspect has since been retired). The navigation of the site was streamlined, new areas where created to support the comms strategy and the redirects were implemented to ensure moved information was handled appropriately.

Continued Developments

While the initial build was completed in late 2021, developments of the website have continued to improve the practical use of the site in line with ShefFood’s comms strategy. During 2022, I improved several pages to showcase Sheffield’s new Food Charter and improve the signup process for new partners who joined the #sheftosilver campaign. In 2023, I’ve already implemented new pages for the working group to showcase the work of the groups and easily display related resources and events. We’ve also improved the partner page further so staff can add new partners quickly and create more content for the site without much extra effort.