CleanEnergy.org
Website Overhaul
While on staff at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, I managed the website overhaul of our main site (cleanenergy.org) and our separate blog site (blog.cleanenergy.org). This was a year-long project between the organization and an Asheville-based web firm. My responsibility was sifting through 10+ years of web and blog content, deciding what needed to stay and what needed to migrate over. I worked with the web developers to streamline content and integrate our blog. The organizations blog was hosted on a separate URL, therefore splitting our web traffic and creating twice the work for staff. Merging the blog with the main site was my recommendation to help with SEO and streamline the organization’s online voice. I worked with the staff designer/videographer to deliver compelling media that told the organizations’ story in a visual and personal way. Lastly, I set up Google tracking and analytics for the new site so staff could understand what content was getting engagement. Equally as important, the tracking helped the organization evaluate what content was not getting traction, allowing staff to prioritize valuable time and resources.
Here is the old, cluttered homepage. Before undergoing the website overhaul, I evaluated the analytics and learned that the homepage had a high bounce rate, meaning users were hitting the homepage and bailing because they didn’t find the information they needed.
Here is the new, trimmed down homepage. As we were thinking of the new homepage’s design, we knew we had to decrease the number of buttons and prioritize engagement.
Furthermore, the new site prioritized video and interactive graphics, like the “clickable” map seen above. We also made a big change to integrate the blog (Latest on Clean Energy section seen above) into cleanenergy.org to consolidate the organization’s online presence. Now the blog’s weekly posts feed the main website, keeping the site active and up-to-date with the organization’s work within the Southeast.