Website Design & Development / Site Structure / Brand Integration / Accessibility / Branch Locator Tool / Calls To Action
The Athens Regional Library System came to us with some common concerns: Despite their best efforts, their existing website structure and the underlying systems supporting it were no longer keeping pace with their communication needs; The amount of content, much of it duplicated, had become challenging to manage; And the design and overall user experience no longer represented the dynamic community resource that they truly were.
By leveraging our experience with websites of this size and scope, we knew right away that a successful redesign hinged on developing the right foundational structure.
Working to understand and best support the most common needs of the varied audiences was crucial to setting the stage for a well-organized, intuitive, and engaging site built to serve the entire library system community for many years.
By working closely with the ARLS team, we were able to determine and define a more streamlined and condensed top-level menu, and then to relocate pages within those sections in a logical and intuitive way for simpler access to key resources and services.
This process of restructuring the site architecture also afforded the team the opportunity to identify redundant, outdated and irrelevant content and remove those pages. As a result, the overall site footprint was condensed from an unwieldy size of over two thousand pages down to a tight but effective 250.
With the recent development of a colorful and dynamic new logo, it was important to ARLS that their web presence reflect and extend that visual brand identity. We worked with them to identify a preferred color palette and apply it across the site in a fun and tasteful way.
The ARLS’ audience is vast and diverse, so it was vital to ensure a level playing field for all from an accessibility perspective. For that reason, we selected a larger, highly readable serif typeface, and implemented large buttons and highly contrasting colors, while following our standard protocol of adhering to ADA website compliance guidelines.
We understood the importance of providing easy access to each branch – whether to their physical location or to the contact info, hours, and location-specific resources provided by each. For that reason, we developed a Google-maps based brand locator tool, allowing visitors to find their nearest brand by proximity, or discover the unique offerings of each.
It should come as no surprise that mobile visits account for more than 56% of the ARLS’ website traffic. As such, we placed heavy emphasis on providing a simple and streamlined mobile experience. All content and resources on the desktop version remain fully accessible, but in a streamlined vertical format built specifically for smaller screen sizes.
The Athens Regional Library System requires the support of a committed community to thrive. We understood the importance of providing clear, ever-present calls to action to present the many opportunities for engagement and participation, implementing an on-brand set of buttons to promote financial and materials donations, volunteership, and participation in the ACC library foundation or as ‘Friends’ of each branch.
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