As the leading nonprofit for lung health, the American Lung Association had specific needs that a total website redesign had to reflect. Every aspect of the project - from page design to SEO to user experience - had to support its vision: a world free of lung disease.
This meant accomplishing multiple milestones in the project:
● Constituent groups from a variety of locations and with unique needs should
be represented in the site’s content.
● The site needs to display the vast amount of research and resources available
in an easy-to-access, streamlined way.
● The content management system needs to be modern, scalable technology
that empowers internal stakeholders.
● Branding and imagery need to represent American Lung Association’s stature
and reputation in the industry.
Rise developed a comprehensive strategy to improve every facet of the association’s website experience, from backend customizations all the way through each user’s journey:
Part 1: Tech-Enabled Innovation for Fast Results: Rise implemented custom caching methods to decrease Page Speed. The CMS stores everything in a SQL Server database but we've set up the site to pre-cache critical data on server startup and to cache database calls after the first visit. This means that in most cases, the server doesn't have to make more than a single database call, and the job is complete in 100 to 300 milliseconds. Additionally, Rise split out javascript into smaller bundles with a webpack build process. This segments code so that web visits only download javascript that is critical to the page (e.g. won't download code for the Events page if you're loading the Homepage).
Part 2: New Site Structure Driven by UX and SEO: American Lung Association’s website is home to several constituent groups, all of which have crucial needs either related to their health or supporting the powerful mission of the association. Pre-project focus groups with over 20 stakeholders illuminated that a common pain point of users was not being able to find the needed information. To ensure that the new site was easy to navigate, Rise's SEO and UX team conducted a deep-dive audit of the entire site—more than 2,400 pages—to determine the highest-trafficked pages and craft an air-tight strategy to protect these pages’ organic traffic during content migration.
Part 3: CMS Replatform Focused on Usability: The client needed the right tools to update and customize their website at will. Rise replatformed the association’s site to Kentico Xperience due to its speed, modernity, and ease of use. With the new
sitemap and Kentico's PageBuilder setup, content editors can create any page necessary in a matter of minutes.
Part 4: Visually Communicating Brand Reputation with Elegant Design: At the beginning of this project American Lung Association was rolling out their first rebrand in one hundred years. It was critical for Rise to leverage this rebrand in the visual aspects of the new website. Our design team worked to develop a website that not only reflected the values of the non-profit, but would resonate with their audience for years to come. The final concept was memorable, motivating, and ultimately more representative of the current organization.
Part 5: Hyperfocus on User Experience: This project was and is more than just numbers to the Rise team. When we worked alongside American Lung Association, we did not just help build a better digital experience; we were helping make a difference in people’s lives. For American Lung Association, a better customer experience with their website means more people can access information about lung disease and join the fight to end it.
By catering to the American Lung Association's mission and responding to their needs as a nonprofit, we crafted a website that streamlined interfaces, empowered internal stakeholders to update & control content, and communicated the association's values and reputation of contributing to global lung health in 2020.
The partnership between Rise and American Lung Association has resulted in exceptional performance improvements for the brand and several industry awards, including the dotCOMM Awards, Hermes Creative Awards, and WebAwards. 6 months post-launch, the results speak for themselves.
● 20% increase in Organic Sessions
● 23% increase in Users from Organic Traffic
● 273% increase in Conversions across all Goals, including Donations
● 20 second decrease in Page Load Speed
