Helping more than 5 million people see again
The Project
Seva Canada is a Vancouver-based not-for-profit that provides eye care in the world’s poorest regions. From medicine, to glasses, to training and support for local eye care clinics, Seva’s mission is to restore sight and prevent blindness in developing countries. Seva reached out to Codename Design to redesign their existing website. The goals? Empower Seva to better tell their story online, provide a new content management system and move to a responsive design that improves mobile experience. In addition to the technical requirements of the project, we also needed to address two unique opportunities. First, improve the online donation process to better engage a younger donor audience. Second, develop a concise brand story and deliver it to a younger target audience using responsive design.
Telling the Story: Content First
Seva is making an incredible difference in the world. Their impact is best captured in the personal stories of those who benefit from their programs. In Seva’s case, storytelling is a combination of written content, images and a variety of video footage. Our goal with their website redesign was to pair their storytelling content with their impact statistics. We wanted to develop a single narrative that demonstrated the direct benefit of donating to the organization. As with every redesign, we were not starting from a blank page. To help us refine large amounts of pre-existing content and stay focused on the end goal, we built a solid audience profile and strategic plan.
As we moved into visual design, we took cues from Seva’s existing style guide. This meant adopting existing elements to a time-based medium like the web.
Stylistically, we were able to use interaction such as narrative sequence scrolling and video, to establish the start of a narrative on the homepage. The narrative continues to unfold as users scroll and present the facts, figures and impact of Seva’s programs.
Organizing Content and Driving Traffic to Generate Donations
Throughout the site, we integrated subtle and not so subtle visual cues to move visitors to key pages, including the donation page. Working within the available platforms, we also employed some anchoring techniques to encourage larger donations. Finally, we simplified the checkout process using different funnels for donations and gifts. Perhaps most importantly, we created a way for the Seva team to easily develop campaign landing pages on the fly and drive traffic to specific pages. This allows Seva to build tailored landing pages that provide a targeted experience and tell a compelling story to potential donors.
Seeing How We Did
In the end, we worked with Seva to develop a responsive, engaging, results-driven website that shares their story and champions their work. Beyond an increase in overall traffic to the site, Seva’s new website has also seen an increase in traffic to the core revenue generating pages, including a near 20% increase in the number of visitors who see the donate page.Traffic
165%
Overall traffic increase
since redesign
18%
Traffic increase
to the /donate page
0.05% to
8.64%
Traffic increase
to the /act page
0.05% to
8.02%
Traffic increase
to the /gifts page
Online Donations
2016 – 2017
1550
Donations
2017 – 2018
1845
Donations
19%
Increase
52%
Revenue Growth
Marc and Graham’s years of strategic and design expertise helped bring Seva Canada’s brand to life. They have the ability to see the big picture without losing sight of the smallest details, ensuring all elements are optimized from our website to trade show booth. Their work helped to drastically improve our overall donor experience and increase conversions.
Deanne Berman, Marketing and Communications Director Seva Canada
