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Disaster preparedness toolkit for nonprofits

September 30, 2009

NCG disaster preparedness toolkit header

“Cate transformed a traditional piece of sequential learning into a dynamic online experience.”

Client: Northern California Grantmakers, San Francisco

Challenges: Northern California Grantmakers was publishing an online toolkit of guidelines and checklists to help foundations prepare their facilities and grantmaking capabilities in case of a major emergency. NCG’s staff had compiled useful content, but the content needed adjustment to meet basic guidelines for website usability.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

To make the toolkit “web ready,” I provided these deliverables:

  • Website outline with an easy-to-understand name for each page
  • Homepage wireframe that designated space to describe the purpose of the toolkit and links to all of the key sections
  • Edited content with edits focused on a few kinds of changes that would make the site easier to navigate and help to optimize it for searching

I also provided content guidelines to help NCG produce more consistent, user friendly, and searchable content while keeping budgets for future website updates to a minimum.

New homepage for toolkit
Homepage of Northern California Grantmakers disaster preparedness toolkit

Live page:
NCG disaster preparedness toolkit This link goes to a different site

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Cascadia.edu website redesign

July 31, 2009

“Thank you for all you have done during this project! Your knowledge and skills, your patience and persistence, your continual search for information about effective sites, and on and on… We’ve learned a lot from you and have appreciated your commitment to quality.” —Linda Hendrickson, Cascadia Community College

Client: Cascadia Community College is a feeder school for the University of Washington. It shares its state-of-the-art, wetland-lined campus with UW Bothell. The magazine Washington Monthly named Cascadia the No. 2 community college This link goes to a different site in the United States.

Challenges: Cascadia’s old website got little traffic because users found it hard to find what they needed, even if the information did exist on the site. The site did not communicate the college’s strengths or provide much information that prospective college students commonly look for. The site was both out-of-date and hard to update.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

To plan and create Cascadia’s new website, I worked with Cascadia’s marketing and communications department and dozens of members of college staff and administration, providing these deliverables:

  • Homepage design for Cascadia.edu
  • Cascadia.edu information architecture and content migration plan
  • Content coaching, guides, and templates for content authors, including standards and guidelines for metadata and microcontent (for usability and search optimization)
  • Writing and editing for selected pages
  • Wireframes for web applications
  • Goals and audiences brief (summary of responses to a strategy questionnaire filled out during a day-long meeting with stakeholders)
  • Brand plan including audience definition, site priorities, and audience profiles (developed with Tauber-Kienan Associates)
  • Consulting on social media strategy
  • Expert evaluation of earlier proposed design

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Keyword at work

May 30, 2009

"Commitment to Sustainability" menu item at galleyecocapital.com

I worked with Lisa Galley to decide what keywords to include in page titles and navigation on the redesigned Galley Eco Capital website. Here’s an example of those keywords at work in the outside world:

Lisa’s post of May 20, 2009 This link goes to a different site, on her blog Our Green Journey, links to a post on sustainability as investment This link goes to a different site at One Block Off the Grid (1BOG).

On the 1BOG post, look for the phrase “commitment to sustainability,” which we identified as a keyword phrase during the redesign of the Galley Eco Capital site. The 1BOG post links that keyword phrase back to a page on Galley Eco Capital site titled — what else — Our Commitment to Sustainability This link goes to a different site.

This keyword loop increases traffic to Galley Eco Capital’s site, improves search results, and enhances the site’s usability (by reinforcing phrases that are relevant to the site’s audience).

» More about website strategy for Galley Eco Capital

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Editing for Cisco.com

December 1, 2008

Client: Cisco

Challenges: Optimize webpages for content usability and search.

Dutchgirl’s solutions

I edited content on Cisco.com for clarity, Cisco style, length, and usability. On selected pages, I also incorporated designated keywords to optimize for search. Topics included various networking products, Cisco services, and programs for Cisco partners.

For more details

… or to discuss your project, contact us.

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