Getting The Most From Your Website: Suwanee River AHEC

Getting The Most From Your Website: Suwanee River AHEC

Getting The Most From Your Website: Suwanee River AHEC

Over the course of the last few months, Cause Inspired Media worked closely with a Florida based nonprofit to launch their new website. Suwanee River Area Health Education Center (AHEC) is an organization that assists individuals in the North Central Florida community with basic health needs, and even trains health professionals and students to better serve the patients in their care. Because they are so involved in their community, and offer programs in twelve counties, having a website that is easy to navigate as well as aesthetically pleasing was a huge priority for their organization. Since Suwanee River AHEC had already been utilizing our Google Grant management services for quite some time, they contacted their account manager and inquired about having us redesign their site.

For their new website, Suwanee River AHEC had a unique and diverse set of needs. Among an extensive wishlist, their top priorities were having a site that could allow visitors to easily understand Suwanee River AHEC’s role in the professional community, along with…

  • A cohesive, modern look that is both lively and engaging,
  • A responsive design,
  • Better user functionality, &
  • A seamless combination of their content with StellarEd Solution’s content.

For this organization, every detail counted, and they wanted their site to reflect a balance between depth and minimalism without sacrificing function. Based on their needs, we began to develop a basic blueprint for their website. During this process we made recommendations for Suwanee River AHEC regarding their content, landing pages, and navigation.

The Challenges: 

Throughout this process, we worked with a third-party graphic designer, hired by Suwanee River AHEC. One of our biggest challenges was taking what images and concepts the graphic designer had created, and adapting them to a responsive website design. With the help of our experienced web designer, Amy, and through extensive communication with the graphic designer, we were able to translate their ideas into a proper website that met all of their needs.

Part of this intensive project was not only working with the graphic designer, but creating a website that was appealing to a large, varied audience. Due to the nature of the organization, there were several audiences that they wanted to appeal to. Their audience includes health professionals and directors (i.e., partners and participants of health education programs/conferences, doctors referring patients, etc.), and community members researching healthy living programs (i.e., tobacco cessation, insurance plans, upcoming work site wellness events, etc.). Because of this, we had to make sure that the website design was simplistic, user friendly, and navigable for their wide audience base.

The images above represent what their blog page looked like on their original site. The image below shows the changes we made for their blog on the new site.

Additionally, Suwanee River AHEC wanted to combine their main site with with some of the content living on StellarEd Solution’s website. These two organizations worked together to provide online and live education services to their allied health professionals. Due to their similar missions, much of the content on their websites overlapped, and Suwanee River AHEC wanted to ensure that the content living on both pages was seamlessly integrated, and easily navigable on their new site. Throughout this process, we were able to pull our resources, and work with directly with their designer to develop a navigational architecture for the site and implement the changes necessary to combine the sites effectively.

The Results:

Despite the challenges, this project was a huge success. Suwanee River AHEC love their new website, and more and more people are visiting it. Because we also actively manage their $10,000 monthly Google Ad Grant, we are able to see, in detail, how their new website has impacted their website traffic. In June of 2016, when we first began the project, their old website was only seeing slightly over 2,000 visitors per month, and they were only spending close to $4,000 of their $10,000 monthly grant, with a fairly low click through rate of 2.18%. Since their new website has gone live, these numbers have nearly doubled. As of last month (January, 2017), over 4,600 people have visited their new site, with an impressive click-through-rate of just under 5%. They even have their monthly ad spend up to $7,500!

With our experience in web development and Google Analytics, combined with Suwanee River AHEC’s detailed requests and consistent communication, we were able to create a site that is both stylish and functional, while enhancing the core mission of their organization.

If you have any questions about developing a new website, or the Google Ad Grant, please contact us!

By: Emily Dietz, Business Development Strategist