The Elephant Sanctuary of Tennessee
The Elephant Sanctuary of Tennessee is a special organization dedicated to the care and well-being to retired elephants from around the world. They rely heavily on grants and donations to run their operations, and they needed a website that made it easier for users to complete two objectives:
- Make it easy for users to find ways to donate, volunteer, or purchase items to help the Sanctuary gain more funding.
- Learn about the Sanctuary’s elephants and many other educational opportunities that are a vital part of the Sanctuary’s mission.
With these objectives in mind, we worked closely with the Sanctuary to create a modernized, responsive website that utilized their amazing photography and residents to help promote their mission.
My Role
With these objectives in mind, we worked closely with the Sanctuary to create a modernized, responsive website that utilized their amazing photography and residents to help promote their mission.
Research
Research for this project came from discussions with the Sanctuary’s staff and looking through their previous site’s analytics to find pain points. This allowed us to easily review their old site to see what could be improved upon and using that data to influence many of the user flows found on the site.
Process
The design process was done very closely with the client. After going over and working to update the website’s style guide from the old version, we presented multiple versions of a homepage design in order to find the best “feel” to fit what the client wanted to portray.
From there, we created layouts for each individual page on the site and reviewed them with the client and those invested in that section of the site. This also allowed the client to review and update any content as we worked through the designs as well.
In the end, we meticulously worked through each page to get approval on all designs before building a responsive front-end of the site.
Challenges and Learnings
The project required a lot of patience as many stakeholders were required for reviews and updates. When so many voices come into the fray, you often have conflicting ideas and input that need to be managed in a way that allows for compromise from all parties. We were able to navigate this well, and the client was very happy with the process and results.
Results and Impact
Since the site launched, the Elephant Sanctuary has seen an increase in donations and product sales from their online store. Along with that, time on the site has increased due to people clicking further into the site to learn more about the Sanctuary and its elephant residents. They’ve also had an uptick in traffic to the site’s most popular page–the Elecam: where users can watch live cameras of the elephants in the habitat.
Not only did the client provide very positive feedback on the process and final design, they’ve continually been happy with the results seen in the site’s analytics.
