Strategy is the bedrock of good design.
Redesigning a website allows an organization to update and improve the user experience. However, in the right hands, retooling a website provides an opportunity to accomplish far more than that. Effectively aligning a website with an organization’s business goals has a powerful impact. It improves conversions, drives clear messaging, and asserts the organization’s unique value proposition while compelling users to take action.
Updates that improve UX and drive business goals.
We took a mobile-first approach to the redesign after our site audit revealed that most of the site’s visits were from mobile devices. The mobile design was informed by the new website’s key goals: ticket sales, memberships, donations, and event registrations.
We always balance a cultural institution’s legacy with the kind of flexibility we know it will need for the future. The Botanical Gardens needs a site that communicates with visitors today and during a forthcoming period of expansion while retaining the ability to illustrate its offerings on the other side of this major endeavor. We accomplished this, in part, by adding flexible custom pages and modules to support the Botanical Gardens’ living collections and exhibitions.
Process makes perfect.
The Botanical Gardens is a beautiful, historical institution providing transformative experiences for visitors daily. Its new website needs to convey that to users.
Our work began with content strategy. We undertook deep information architecture and content organization work. We used the website to bring messaging and the values we developed during the client’s rebranding work.
We then moved to wireframing, where we became more granular with content organization and began to outline page-specific content hierarchy and how we would display the work with UI elements. Developing new sections devoted to the living collection and its heavy roster of events ensures people can plan their visits accordingly. We also eased the pathway to purchasing tickets, booking events, and making donations on the site. Finally, we brought the site to life using the new logo, look, and brand guidelines created in our initial phase of work.
A solid brand is fundamental to the success of a significant marketing project like a website redesign. Leveraging the new brand we created, we built a sophisticated and extensible website that supports the Botanical Gardens today and tomorrow. The Botanical Gardens’ redesigned website uses our custom hand-drawn illustrations to add even more color and richness to the brand experience, making the website as unique and special as the magical Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens is to our community.
Our redesign of the website addresses the challenges revealed by our research. From mobile access, updated branding and messaging, and improved navigation to intuitive visual cues, reorganized information, and clear calls-to-action, the Botanical Gardens’ new website pays homage to its historical significance while seeding its future success.