A few years ago, 3 Choices was involved with the launch of the Washington Nonprofit Institute website. The site provides materials for 24/7 learning to members of the nonprofit sector across the state of Washington. At the time, we created icons, images, and content, and then a developer published it using a stock WordPress theme intended for nonprofit causes.
As the staff of Washington Nonprofits added content, they quickly outgrew the nonprofit theme. It was intended to look pretty and raise funds, not deliver hundreds of pieces of multimedia content. Without a strong taxonomy and multi-level menus, users couldn’t find what they needed.
I proposed that we redesign the site with a different WordPress theme, one that would use the dynamic power of the database to deliver content. The theme I suggested was MH Magazine, the same news magazine theme we used for the Washington Nonprofits website.
Without having to write any custom code, we were able to reorganize all the content using tags and categories. Combined with a more robust search engine and a lot more menu options, it allows users to find what they’re looking for, fast, and then see what else is available that’s related to it.
The results have been striking. The number of pages per visit has literally doubled in two months! The content was always there, but users were not able to find it. Now they go from one piece of content to the next…to the next…to the next…an average of six times.