Colorado Vincent Volunteers is a year-long service program in Denver, Colorado. It’s a wonderful program – the volunteers serve at local agencies, live in community, participate in prayer, and do it all in gorgeous Denver. I was delighted when they asked me to redesign their website – because I think it’s such a fantastic organization and wanted to help make their web presence reflect that.

The Needs

• The web editor that their website was on was unwieldy, difficult to use, and pretty archaic. They wanted to be able to easily edit the content of the site themselves.
• Although many of their volunteers found the website useful for information, they knew it could be even better, in both form and function. It had been 14 years since it was last redesigned. (!)
• Many volunteers are women – they wanted to attract men, too!
• With applicants who are all in their 20s – the more information on their website the better.
• They needed a way to share upcoming events on the front page.

The Solutions

• WordPress as a content management system was ideal –  I trained one of the staff members how to use it and she quickly became adept.
• A slideshow on the front page featuring big, beautiful images of volunteers accompanying the four pillars of the mission.
• A color palette and texture were selected that echoed the natural beauty of the location in Colorado (and it wasn’t too feminine).
• We worked together to come up with a new organization for the pages and navigation (called a sitemap). Along with a dropdown menu, I directed visitors to the most important pages through images and graphics on the homepage.
• We created a few new features – such as the “Year in the Life.”
• I created several widgets for the front page – when there is a current event, I styled a widget they can add text to. When they have an event with an image, they just crop it in a square and pop it in another widget. If they don’t need to advertise anything, there is a widget that shares a testimonial quote and links to a page of reflections from former volunteers.