How to know if your site is optimally organized and designed
Now that you’ve decided that it’s time to take action to improve your website, it’s time to see if any user experience upgrades could help. Take a look through our list of issues below, and the tips to help resolve them.
Having a hard time converting leads or getting sales?
If you’re not sure why you’re not generating business from your website, it’s time to get serious about strategy and subsequent user experience upgrades. Here’s how:
Add a survey to your website using tools like Jotform’s Survey Maker to understand what users are looking for
Take a look at your analytics to understand where you are losing your users. If you don’t have analytics installed, get either Google Analytics or Tag Manager set up on your site.
Try an online user testing platform like Hotjar to help you go beyond standard analytics with heatmaps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels and more. Complete a User Experience & Conversion Optimization Audit with Kanopi Studios. We can make a whole range of insightful recommendations within your budget. Contact us to learn more.
Does your site take forever to load?
If it takes longer than three seconds, you have a problem.
Use Google PageSpeed or Pingdom to test your site’s speed, understand what might be slowing it down and take action to resolve any issues.
Make sure you have a reliable hosting company backing your site at the right level for the amount of traffic you receive.
Does your site work on mobile? Is it accessible?
It’s vital to make sure your site is accessible to everyone, no matter what device or screen size they are using. Here’s how to check:
Try using your site on a phone or a tablet. If you have to pinch or zoom to interact with the content, it’s time for a responsive design.
Make sure you can tab through all navigation and content on your site using only your keyboard, that all images have alt tags, and that you are able to use a voice browser to “read” your pages out loud. If not, you are missing key elements of accessibility.
Contact Kanopi Studios about an accessibility audit. We can help you identify the issues and build a plan for how to resolve them.
Is it frustrating – or impossible – to update content on your site?
If it’s a major undertaking to change even the simplest thing, something needs to happen.
Define your ideal workflow, then ask an expert to take a look and see how you can optimize the backend.
Consider the types of content that your site needs to support. Do you have templates in place that meet your needs? If not, it may be time to consider a bit of design and development time to build additional page types on your site.
Getting negative user feedback?
If the people visiting your site are taking the time to complain, chances are they might also take the time to help you make things better. Here’s how:
Collect feedback by sending out a survey, or document your customer service calls.
Always thank people for taking the time to help you improve.
Look for trends in the information you are receiving from users and build a plan to address any issues to help meet their needs
If none of the issues above apply, congratulations! Your user experience is likely more solid than many of the websites out there! But there are still more things to consider before committing to rebuilding your site. In our next post, we will walk you through a number of common technical issues and some helpful fixes for them.
Concerned About the Health of Your Website? Download our Checklist.
Amber Young
There are so many factors that go into creating and maintaining a successful website that it can be hard to know where to start. It’s also difficult to prioritize your limited time and resources. That’s why we made a checklist to help you track best practices, from design, to user experience to accessibility, SEO and everything in between.
Use it as a reference to evaluate your website and focus your energy on the areas where you can make the biggest impact for your business and your audience.
We’re planning to create more checklists that dive deeper into some of our main practice areas. Let us know if there is a topic that would be helpful to you by writing to hello@kanopistudios.com.
While “looking at the numbers” is a quantitative way to determine how well you’ve succeeded at meeting your business goals, your audience is not a troop of robots that generate traffic numbers and donation statistics. They are living, breathing, thinking, analytical people.
Not only are they people, but most likely, they’re people with very little time in their day. In an age of constant connectivity and ubiquitous multitasking, it’s important to make an immediate impact and a clear call to action when they choose to spend their precious moments with you.
How do you make the greatest impact when you have only a few seconds of someone’s attention? Here are some tips to use during the web development process to help you to make their visit as impactful as possible.
Provide Relevant Content
The key word here is relevant. You need to dig deeply into what will be relevant for your audience. Think about the frame of mind they are in when they reach your site. For example, if most site visitors are coming to your site through a Facebook advertisement, then the page they land on should pick up the messaging and push them towards the conversion action set in that Facebook advertisement. We do not want to interrupt or divert their path, we want to extend it.
Analytics and site feedback from your users also give you big clues as to what content and activities resonate most with your audience. Optimize your site for those items. Your site needs to live, breathe, and adjust to the ever-changing needs and interests of your site visitors.
Kanopi Tip: Have a strategy for ongoing site maintenance to make it easy to continually optimize your site. Kanopi’s strong support team works with your organization to identify and implement optimizations. We are an extension of your team and are always there when you need us!
Kanopi Tip: Providing more relevant content might mean more targeted, expert content development for your site. Showcasing your expertise will lead to your audience seeing you as a trusted resource (and will help with your SEO for findability!)
Provide a Reason to Care
Your mission is important. But do your visitors realize how important it really is? Giving them a big fat “Donate” button in the header and expecting them to click it doesn’t acknowledge the whole picture. The button is only part of the work. Giving them ways to donate or join the conversation in spots they can always access helps, but you must provide this content in the context of a story. Your story. As passive visitors to a site, we want to be sold on why we should do something — not just told what to do.
Kanopi Tip: Compel your users to take action by involving them in your story. Don’t just tell them about your mission. Evoke emotion and connect with them. Promote pathways for conversions and donations in logical, progressive ways. Kanopi works to determine conversion points within the experience that make sense. For example, if you are talking about stories involving the individuals you help, share those individuals’ perspectives, images, or testimonials. Invite the user to engage with others or to share their story with you. This type of conversion can lead to donations, certainly. But more importantly it can lead to advocacy, inspiring your visitors to become advocates for your mission and spreading the word to others.
Don’t Trust Your Gut
While it is critical to humanize the experience, you do need those numbers to back up decisions as to what the humans on your site actually want and need. Making a subjective decision based on internal demands and objectives will only please the internal teams — not your users. Make your audience your focus during the web development process. Put benchmarks into place, and ask users for feedback. Getting information directly from your audience and their online behavior is the best way to be sure you address their needs within your site.
Make Interaction Easy
We mentioned the idea of “content in context” — integrating logical conversion points throughout your site experience in spots your users can always easily access, as well as within the context of your larger story. But we also need to optimize for a user’s environment. Mobile is now the dominant form of internet browsing. Our users are on the go. Don’t expect your audience to be settled in with a cup of coffee and a dedicated block of time to wander through your site on their desktop. Mobile is critical to the web development process.
Kanopi Tip: A responsive site should be thought of as “mobile-first”. At Kanopi, we strategize starting with the smallest screen sizes and work our way up from there. How do people interact with elements that you want to be omnipresent if they’re in a mobile context? Should the donation button, usually in the main header on desktop, be pinned to the bottom of the phone’s viewport for easy access? Should the phone number be more prominent on a mobile device?
Kanopi Tip: When designing for mobile, also think about the ergonomic position in which someone holds a phone — usually one handed, making their thumb the easiest way to navigate. Should that primary call to action go right next to where their thumb naturally lies for even easier access? And how big does it need to be to ensure an easy click target for touch?
Make Interaction Fast
Statistical data shows that the average page load time in the US for most sites is 5-7 seconds. Those same statistics show that abandonment rates take an exponential rise if your page takes longer than three seconds to load, and Google prefers that you have it under two seconds.
Given that in the US, ~71% of digital minutes spent are on mobile devices, and it’s ~62% in Canada, one thing is clear — speed matters in getting your message out. When it comes to web pages, bigger isn’t always better.
Kanopi Tip: Consider implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for your site. AMP is an open source project backed by Google that is focused on building a faster, simpler, and more performant web that is optimized for mobile devices. And As a bonus, you’ll get an SEO boost from the use of this approach.
Kanopi Tip: The biggest culprit in slow page load time on most pages is the number and file size of image assets. Kanopi recommends being very choosy in your use of imagery. Well designed vector imagery, use of color, and beautiful typography can have just as big a visual impact with a much smaller page footprint. And always leverage an image compression tool when you’re managing image files on your site.
Kanopi Tip: Only load what a user needs. At Kanopi, we take a progressively enhanced approach to web development. By starting mobile-first, we will load only the assets the mobile experience needs to render, keeping it as fast as possible. And we’ll add features and functionality as we scale. We are also not afraid to ask the hard questions — if a mobile user doesn’t need that feature… does anyone? Users leveraging external readers and “reading views” on web pages are becoming more and more prominent. They don’t want your eye candy. They want your content.
There is no “Build it and they will come.”
Building an audience-focused website with compelling stories will not cause an automagical spike in your site interactions or user donations. Understanding where your audience was before and after your site experience will give you a better understanding of how to market to them. Your site is one step in a multifaceted customer journey.
Where did their journey start? Were they at a third party platform that focuses on your subject matter? Can you partner with that platform to serve content about your organization?
Do they typically leave to visit a site rating your subject matter? Should you beef up your testimonials there to help them make a decision on interacting with you?
Kanopi Tip: Your site is one piece of your digital presence, and one piece of your audience’s user journey. Thinking of your site as the sole representation of your organization is not wise. People jump around and research with all the different resources available to them. Making conscious marketing choices can help make your presence, once they do land on your site, more valid, more recognizable and an authority for your cause.
Humanize the web development process!
Putting your users and their needs front and center helps both your audience and your organization and builds a relationship of trust and advocacy between them. It is the human element of our online experience that drives the numbers we use to justify our digital marketing activities to our stakeholders and makes the web development process more targeted and effective. If you try some of our tips, please contact us and let us know how they worked for you. And if you need assistance or have questions, reach out. We are always here for you.
Kanopi is a women-run and family-owned business that is centered around beautiful design and strong architecture. Our data-driven approach fosters user-centricity and creates holistic web experiences based on user decisions. We believe that regular communication and support are the cornerstones of good development, and strive to give our clients a unique sense of ownership and investment in their work with Kanopi.
Colleges, universities, and other higher education websites have to be a lot of things to a lot of people. These institutions are filled with some of the smartest people on the planet who are trying to share their information with not only their peers, but also with laypeople and prospective students. Some institutions have hundreds of departments, each with its own goals and priorities. So how do you build a website that meets the complex and multilayered needs of higher education?
Our answer is research. We’ve worked with universities and colleges both big and small — from Stanford and Berkeley to local community colleges. And all of them start in the same place: targeted research to determine who is actually using the website (as opposed to who faculty and staff think is using the website) and what is important to those users.
Clients are often surprised by the findings of our user-focused research. Why? Because the results don’t mesh with their preconceived notions of how many people are using the site and for what purposes. But the end results speak for themselves. Knowing exactly who your audience is and what they need is a crucial but often overlooked step that can make the difference between a good website and a brilliant one. As an added bonus, being able to point to the research can help to manage the sometimes competing goals and priorities (and dare we say egos?) of various departments … and department heads.
Once the research has been conducted, we turn our attention to organization. Universities are often what we affectionately call “hoarders.” When we migrated the Berkeley School of Information’s legacy website to a new version of Drupal, we had to work with ten years of content — much of which was outdated and no longer relevant to the university’s audience.
During the discovery process, we went through each content type and mapped the old content to the new website. This process allowed the School to carefully analyze how much of the old information was necessary to bring over to the new site. It also allowed the Kanopi team to gain clarity on the specific content that needed to be migrated during the development phase. Working with immense amounts of content is a challenge that particularly applies to higher education, which is why we develop a system for content governance early in the process.
We know that many colleges and universities have their own information technology systems and protocols, and we’re happy to work within those. We have a strict “don’t reinvent the wheel” policy! (Another reason we do so much research up front: we know exactly what we’re working with — which saves the client time and money down the road.)
Integration is key when managing higher education websites that are both broad and deep, with multiple sections and applications. Our years of experience integrating single sign-on for users saves time and headaches and streamlines what once was an unwieldy, cumbersome process.
Thankfully for the world we live in, institutions of higher education are hotbeds of free thinking and intellectual independence. Of course, this isn’t limited to the lecture hall and academic papers. The spirit of independence also applies to website management and maintenance. No higher ed client wants to depend on their web company for every little change and problem, so we use a “teach the teacher” support model. We train the power users and site admins so that they aren’t tied to us, but are empowered to manage their own sites going forward. Of course, if things ever get out of hand or the IT department goes on vacation all at once, we’re here 24/7 with reliable, responsive support.
Kanopi has years of experience working with higher education websites and clients all across the United States and Canada. Some recent clients include UCLA, Stanford, Berkeley, Washington State, UCSF, Columbia, the University of Delaware, and the University of British Columbia. We do our homework (lots and lots of homework), test our theories through vigorous research, and then build the very best websites for our nation’s very brightest institutions of higher learning. Contact us to help with yours.
Your nonprofit organization needs a new website. Expectations are huge, but your budget is tiny. Once again, you’re being asked to turn straw into gold. And you get it — donors want their money going to your life-changing programs, not into bells and whistles for your website. But how can you build a website that serves the mission of your organization when you have limited resources?
Sound familiar?
At Kanopi Studios, we love nonprofit organizations. In fact, most of us are volunteers, activists, and donors for causes as diverse as famine relief in East Africa to programming lessons for underprivileged kids in San Francisco. And we understand the push-back some nonprofits get when it comes to spending money and time building a great website — especially when it comes to user experience (UX) research.
We’re a data-driven web development company. That means we don’t just make websites that look good; they have to work hard — and smart — at the same time. In the nonprofit world, that means your website not only needs to look modern and appealing, but most importantly, it needs to be usable and have captivating content for YOUR users to help you raise money. The distinction here is that your audience is unique and you need to understand them in order to build a website experience with which they will engage. In our many years of experience, the best way to make this happen is by conducting user experience research before doing anything else.
You know the saying, “Do it right or do it twice?” Definitely applies here. In fact, not doing UX research will likely cost you money — maybe a lot of it. If a donor comes to your site with the intention to give, but can’t figure out how to do that or is put off by an awkward or frustrating experience, they won’t be coming back. You’ll have missed out on what could have turned into a lifelong philanthropic partnership. And as boomers and millennials turn more and more toward online and mobile giving, your website is becoming an increasingly vital part of your fundraising strategy. Doing thoughtful but affordable UX research will help you understand what your audience needs. This will inform better usability and help you create compelling content, which will tip potential donors over the threshold into donating funds.
So how to conduct the user experience research you need with the budget you have? For starters, hire a web development company that understands and loves non-profits — like us! We offer great non-profit rates while still providing the same top-quality service we give our corporate clients. We happily work within limited budgets, from UX through to the finished product. We know that improving your website is just one of many projects on your to-do list! Leaning on an experienced firm like Kanopi Studios will all you to focus on changing lives while we do what we’re best at.
Here’s just a sample of how we can bring affordable UX research to your organization:
Create an online site survey. We start with your current users and ask them what’s working and what isn’t (and we’re experts in asking the right questions to get the data we need). We keep the survey short and sweet to make sure it’s not daunting to your audience.
Conduct online user session research. We use an analytics platform to see how current uses are navigating around your site, learning from their behavior.
Use online analytical tools. Google Analytics and other online tools are useful (and free) ways to get an idea of how users are currently interacting with your site. In fact, many organizations (maybe yours?) already have Google Analytics but aren’t using it to its full potential.
Keyword analysis. Keeping with the Google theme, Google’s free keyword planner can help you determine which key phrases will resonate with your audience and direct them toward the action you’d like them to take.
Do a comparative analytics review. We not only analyze your site, but sites similar to yours — especially those that are working well.
Recruit friends and family. Research participants don’t have to be strangers, and they don’t have to get paid. Reach out to your volunteers, staff, donors, and board members (and ask them to reach out to their friends and families!) to create a pool of research participants. Try to find people who fit into your target audience, and remember: not every opinion will apply to your needs. The idea here is to identify general trends.
Go where your audience is. Do you organize a big fundraising event like a gala or a run? This is the perfect place to ask a few questions of your target audience, most of whom will be thrilled to offer feedback. And it costs you nothing. Focus on asking specific questions versus just asking for them to provide their opinions on the site. For example, ask, “What type of information are you looking for when you consider donating to an organization?” Asking questions like these can help inform your content strategy.
Use the back of the napkin strategy. In Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Steve Krug suggests sketching out your web design and flow on the back of a napkin or a scrap piece of paper, and ask test subjects to tell you how they would navigate that site. Nothing fancy, but it gives you the results you need. It’s also easy and quick to modify in this format, so you can iterate as you go.
Card sorting. If we’re going old school with napkins, we can’t forget the UX power of card sorting! Use index cards or sticky notes to map out your site–one card for each page or section. Then ask someone in your target audience to sort the cards according to how they would group the information together. The results can be enlightening! (And it’s also kind of fun.)
Sometimes simple changes translate into big results — but you won’t know what changes to make without research. One of our nonprofit clients was struggling with converting website visitors to donors. Our research showed that the problem was the color of the “Donate” button. Seriously. We changed the color and donations increased.
For another client, the confusion lay in how to log into their personalized account page. Through a series of tests, we determined that a simple language change on the homepage would bring more clarity to site visitors and direct them to where they wanted to go. It worked.
We know that as a nonprofit, you have to do more than less. And we’re committed to helping you with affordable ux as well as other effective ways to spread your message and raise money for your cause. Contact us today and let’s talk about how we can create the very best website for your organization.
Starting a new website project can feel overwhelming. Finding the right agency — one that truly understands your needs and can deliver effectively — is crucial. The best way to set yourself up for success? Ask the right questions from the start. But equally as important is providing as much clarity as possible in your Request for Proposal (RFP), ensuring that the responding agencies can offer accurate estimates and informed responses.
For large organizations with multiple decision-makers (we’re looking at you higher education and healthcare!) this process can be even more complex. Procurement requirements, departmental priorities, and differing opinions can make alignment challenging.
We see a lot of RFPs … ones that are 100 pages long and full of legal and procurement boilerplate, to those that are just three to five pages (and in case you were wondering, we prefer the shorter, more concise ones that get to the heart of the problem). So we have thoughts on what makes a great RFP.
As you work through the template, here are a few essentials to keep in mind:
Know your goals. Align with your internal teams in advance of the RFP process to define (and align) your needs.
Think in terms of building a long-term relationship. A good partnership with your vendors is key and should be established from the beginning. Do you like them as people? Can you imagine being on hours of calls? Choose an agency you can imagine collaborating with for years.
Be transparent. Clarity will benefit everyone. The clearer you are, the stronger and more customized the proposals you’ll get.
State your budget. This is a big one. When you include a realistic budget range, agencies can tailor their recommendations and avoid over- or under-scoping. It saves everyone time, builds trust, and ensures proposals are grounded in what’s achievable. Also consider reserving some percentage for contingency.
Don’t be overly prescriptive. Describe your challenges, not the exact solutions. Good agencies are gifted at coming up with expert solutions to challenges that are stated in terms of problem statements or business objectives. Keeping an open mind will allow you to see (and compare) your prospective vendor’s recommendations and benefit from their expertise.
Give yourself and your vendor enough time. Start the RFP process before your need is immediate to avoid extra pressure on both sides to meet an unnecessarily tight timeline to respond. Allowing more time can also mean more considered and complete responses.
Talk to your potential vendors ahead of time. This allows you to establish the relationship and pre-select the ones you suspect will be a good fit. The right vendors can provide a lot of value early in the process, which may even help inform the scope or direction of the RFP.
If you use AI to write your RFP:
AI tools can help you get started faster, but be careful: they tend to add unnecessary detail (and bloat equals a higher budget). To keep your RFP sharp:
Begin with a clear problem statement and desired outcomes.
Ask AI to outline sections, not write a full document.
Review, refine, and delete anything that doesn’t add value.
Separate “must-haves” from “nice-to-haves.”
Always have a human proofread any AI parts of your RFP to sanity-check the output against your goals and budget.
Kanopi’s Allison Manley gave a presentation at the NTC Conference on how to write a winning RFP. Check out her presentation below to get more in-depth information.
Confused by web accessibility? Don’t know where to start? Below is our Web Accessibility 101 guide. This should help you with the tools and high-level explanations of what to look for to make your site accessible online. We also have another post about the specific definitions and acronyms used in web accessibility.
What do we mean by Web Accessibility?
At the highest level, web accessibility means that all the information and functionality on your website is accessible to any person, regardless of their individual needs and challenges. Sites that are well-designed and developed make it possible for everyone to be included in the exchange of information online.
What is “Section 508,” and why does it matter to me?
When people talk about “Section 508,” they are referring to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It’s a mouthful, so we tend to shorten it. It’s the section of this Act that focuses on US requirements for making government electronic systems usable and accessible for people with disabilities. All federal government institutions are required to be compliant with Section 508.
In practice, though, many people use “Section 508” as a catchphrase to refer to anything related to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Section III of this Act protects the rights of users with disabilities with regards to websites and digital media. These rules apply to broader state and local government, businesses, and non-profits. Legally, disabled users have a right to access any service online that is accessible to the able-bodied public. Just like the requirement that businesses have ADA-compliant physical locations, a website has to be compliant as well.
Section 508 (and the related Section 255 of the Communications Act of 1934) has received much-needed refresh as of January 18, 2017 (as of May 2025, this is still the most recent update). You can read all about the changes on the Access Board website. As a part of the refresh, they have fully incorporated the WCAG 2.0 A and AA guidelines as a basis for the revised standards.
In 2024, WCAG 2.1 was released. All websites that Kanopi currently audits adhere to WCAG 2.1.
Wait, what? What’s WCAG?
The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, is the most fundamental set of accessibility recommendations for the web. The difference is that these guidelines are only that — a recommendation — and not historically a mandate. But with the refresh, they are the most straightforward answer to how to get your website up to ADA and Section 508 compliance.
The WCAG group accessibility features into three levels of compliance. In order of least to most accessible are A, AA, and AAA. At Kanopi, we focus on meeting level AA compliance with the most recent release of WCAG standards for our clients; that’s a safe benchmark for universities and progressive organizations who are focused on comprehensively supporting their users. And now, as of the beginning of the year, it’s the mandate for governmental compliance.
Do I really have that many users who need this kind of support? Why is it important?
When we think about users with special needs and disabilities, it’s easy to focus on the most extreme cases, and feel like these users are such a small percentage of the population that the likelihood that they will visit your website is likewise small. But according to the CDC, 22% of the population in the US have a disability today. Any of us may experience a disability in our lifetime. The reality is that many able users or users with situational disabilities also benefit from a well-constructed, accessible site. Keyboard warriors. People with tired eyes and screen fatigue. People using a device one-handed. Search engines. Users with lousy bandwidth. Maximizing your site’s accessibility maximizes the reach of your message. And with all the noise on the internet, that’s a great thing.
How challenging are these kinds of things to fix?
Kanopi recently undertook the challenge of performing accessibility audits on several of our support client sites. One of the sites we tested was Colorado Health Foundation, a statewide philanthropic organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of all Coloradans. While accessibility wasn’t the only focus of our work together, it was critical that the site be accessible for all Coloradans.
The previous site was inaccessible for keyboard users. Upgrading the site architecture to a more recent version of Drupal was an important step, allowing us to improve tab navigation and heading structure.
Many of the enhancements our support team implemented are invisible to sighted users. The biggest visual challenge we faced was adjusting the color palette of the website to still adhere to the brand guidelines for look and feel, but to support a high enough contrast ratio to be usable to people with vision impairments. Our designers presented some subtle alternatives that still adhered closely to the active site experience, and we worked directly with the client to get to an adjusted palette that worked for both the brand image and the site’s audience.
So what was our first step to get this to a more compliant state? There are numerous tools available to run automated checks on a site to see where the gaps are in your accessibility accommodation, and this is the approach we took to our initial testing. Every audit we ran turned up something different. And even after resolving those issues, no automated tool is a replacement for extensive human review on any voice browser, text browser, keyboard, or other alternative browsing platform you can get your hands on. There are challenges that an automated review simply won’t find. In a review of a number of automated testing tools, Gov.uk found that these options only picked up an average of 71% of the accessibility problems on a given page.
As a result of these efforts, the site is more broadly accessible, more easily navigable, and ensures that every user has greater access to healthcare needs. The updated site now scores 95/100 on Lighthouse, with improved fonts, tab navigation, and meaningful links.
What about external code that I use on my site that comes from other vendors, like analytics platforms or social media?
You’d be surprised, and probably shocked, how many vendors out there choose not to make their products accessible. Or they are simply not aware of the barriers they create for end users on their partners’ sites. Kanopi is not only a seasoned development agency, but we do a lot of deep user experience work for our clients as well. Before you build something, you need to be sure it’s the right something, and that it meets the needs and goals of your target audience. As a part of our user experience research, we’ll frequently opt to send out a simple questionnaire. It can be as basic as just a popup that says “What are you looking for today?” and that alone will yield a wealth of insights into what users really need from your web presence.
There are a number of tools we use for these types of surveys. In working with the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), we wanted to prompt users to fill out a few questions about their reasons for visiting the site and their experiences while there. We also needed to have support for multiple languages for survey respondents. So we used one of our standard set of tools that fit the criteria for the questionnaire.
The SFPL has a deep commitment to accessibility and making information available to everyone. It turns out that the popup tool we were using made the site unusable for anyone who was using alternative or assistive navigation and tools. There was no way for these users to opt out of the survey or get past it.
As soon as we received feedback from our clients on behalf of these users, we pivoted. We adjusted our questions to use SurveyMonkey and Google Forms, which are both fully compliant and accessible options. When we went to our initial survey vendor with our concerns and to advocate for a more accessible tool, we were met with a brick wall. Accessibility wasn’t a priority for them, and it wasn’t an item that they had on their roadmap. It was disheartening. But now we have greater insight into the weaknesses of the platform. We have found the right tools to use to ensure we reach as many of our clients users as possible. And the decision whether or not to keep disabled users in mind will have an ultimate effect on the bottom line for all parties involved.
What kinds of tools can I use to assess the compliance of my website?
Ultimately, these issues are much easier to build in during the initial site development process than they are to fix after launch. That’s why working with a skilled and knowledgeable team is so important if you’re looking at redesigning and rebuilding your site. The good news though is that there is a wealth of tools out there for supporting anyone beginning their journey to creating a more accessible online experience.
One very simple check you can do is to just turn off CSS on your site and see how the content flows and how readable and structured it is. If you want to go deep into testing your site, we have a comprehensive list here of all the ways you can test your site for accessibility compliance. But below is a list of a few options for you to check out if you’d like to see how your site currently performs for disabled users.
The Berkeley School of Information (UC Berkeley I School) contacted Kanopi Studios with a robust request: a redesign of their website, guidance on the modernization of development techniques, and a full migration of their site to the newest version of Drupal — which meant moving over 10 years of content.
This kind of request wasn’t unusual for us. Higher education clients are unique in that they are a lot of things to a lot of people. Audiences include academic peers, laypeople, current students, and prospective students. There are often competing goals and priorities, all of which need to be examined and addressed.
The answer to meeting the complex needs of higher education clients is always the same: start with research. With I School, our first stop was discovery. We had to figure out what we had to work with. That meant working closely with I School to determine content types, decide what information was still relevant, map the content to the new site, and gain clarity on the specific content that needed to be migrated during the development phase.
Then we set out our deliverables:
Drupal migration
Redesign
Training
Development pipeline
Responsive theming
We used a persona-driven design process that started and ended with the user. We asked the questions, “Who are we trying to attract?” and “What do they want to see?” We blended the classic elements of UC Berkeley with a modern look and feel that would attract prospective students, while at the same time making sure the design would maintain the same high quality across a variety of platforms and devices.
In order to modernize the development practices used for I School’s site, we reorganized the way code and files were structured and refactored some of the custom modules so we could take advantage of newer tools in Drupal 7, such as the Database API, Panels, and various caching methods.
We also provided I School with a full platform for continuous software delivery, with automated deployments to the development site and scripted deployments across all environments. The bottom line? Less downtime and a more responsive site.
“It was a great pleasure to work with Kanopi on our website redesign project. We faced a daunting challenge migrating our highly customized site from one version of Drupal to another, while simultaneously moving to a completely new responsive visual design. The Kanopi team’s expertise and enthusiasm were critical to the success of our project. We couldn’t have done it without them!”
– Kevin Heard, Senior Director of Information Technology, UC Berkeley School of Information
As they say, the proof is in the pudding. In the weeks since the new site launched, measurable improvements are already being noticed by site administrators and, most importantly, by the users! Here’s a snapshot of the improvements:
Sessions increased by 4.29%
Users increased by 3.11%
Page views increased by 22.30%
Pages/session increased by 17.26%
Average session duration increased by 11.33%
Bounce rate decreased by 1.42%
From research to organization to design to modernization, our decisions were driven by data every step of the way. Contact us today to discover how we can transform your site and help you meet your goals.
This summer, Canella Response Television partnered with Kanopi Studios to create a website that helps generate sales for their Vacation Hunters TV direct response television (DRTV) program. Vacation Hunters TV provides an amazing deal for a vacation for two to Mexico’s Maya Riviera. Their DRTV spot features gorgeous and enticing clips of locations to visit and things to do in the Maya Riviera- and of course, their killer offer- presented by savvy traveler extraordinaire, Cindy Christi. This was Kanopi’s first DRTV website, and we were excited about the challenge to increase their conversion rate.
A DRTV program asks consumers to respond directly to the ad by calling in or visiting their website. The Vacation Hunters TV offer is only redeemable by phone, so our goal was to have users call the 800 number and book their trip. After watching the show multiple times to get an understanding of their flow of information and call-to-actions, we dove into the UX and design. The site needed to be an extension of the show- informative, enticing media, ample call-to-actions, and be beautifully clean and simple, unlike a lot of in-your-face DRTV companion sites.
We took the tried and true flow of a DRTV show and reimagined it for the web. We designed a one-page, long-scrolling site, introducing users to the offer, enabling them to explore the opportunity and locations through text, videos, and photos. The site also presents the host and Partners that make this deal possible. It wraps up with another offer, all while subtly keeping the call-to-action front and center.
The result? Within three weeks of the site being live, www.vacationhunters.tv generated over 1,000 phone calls and their usual conversion rate of 3-4% was up to 7.5%. Happy travelers and a euphoric client! Now that we’ve completed our work, we’re ready to pack our bags and head to Mexico. ¡Hasta luego!
