Boys Town Website Redesign

The Opportunity: A New Marketing Department Establishes New Goals

Since 1917, Boys Town has been a beacon of hope for at-risk children and families. Over the years, Boys Town has become one of the largest, publicly funded, nonprofit child-care agencies in the country, providing compassionate treatment for the behavioral, emotional and physical problems of children and families.

As a nonprofit organization that relies on donations, Boys Town’s website is a key point of contact for potential donors. The organization realized that it was time for a fresh website design that had a clean, easy-to-navigate format that would maximize the user experience.

“We really wanted to create a more active channel for outreach and delivery,” said John Burkey, director of marketing at Boys Town. “We also have several sites that we maintain, and we really wanted to integrate those sites more and streamline them.

“I was very impressed with Envoy’s team — their creativity, their focus on the client, their ability to bring innovation to the table,” Burkey said. “So when it came down to choosing who to go to for our website redesign, we knew it would be Envoy.”

Boys Town had other goals for its website, too. First, the organization wanted to increase website traffic and donations. Keywords, meta tags and analytics would play a integral part in achieving this goal, so Envoy’s expertise in those areas could be well-utilized. Boys Town also wanted the site to visually and literately tell the Boys Town story. Site navigation was also a driver for this project, as Boys Town wanted user-friendly navigation that would encourage a desired click-through path.

The Operation: Envoy Brings Flexibility, Integration and a Fresh Look to the Boys Town Website

Envoy began by performing a WebWorks Assessment on Boys Town’s website. This process examines the client’s current website against key criteria and competitors’ websites. During the assessment, Envoy also interviews current site visitors to determine what enhancements would make the website more user-friendly, functional and relevant for them.

Boys Town also had a lot of information for its main website, and it had sister sites that needed to be created or redesigned. Thus, the main Boys Town site needed to be well-organized and simple to navigate, with easy-to-find links to the sister sites.

Envoy recommended a flexible content management system (CMS) and framework. The CMS Boys Town chose is a dynamic, open source CMS and application framework that is extremely flexible, modular and extendable. With Drupal, Boys Town’s website can easily be enhanced and updated to meet the organization’s needs. Because the CMS supports multiple users at multiple locations, the Boys Town site can be updated as needed, and disparate employees can all make their own updates as well.

Results Within Weeks

Just a few weeks after the launch of the new Boys Town website, the site’s analytics reveal good news: Between Feb. 1 and Feb. 17, 2010, the Boys Town donate page ranked 61 in terms of page views. After the site launched on Feb. 18, the donate page moved up to 17 in terms of page views in just under a week. By June 2010, Boys Town’s Web donations increased by 33 percent.

Envoy distributed a survey to key external audiences and donors to obtain their feedback about the new site. The results show that more than 98 percent of respondents said the new Boys Town website is easy to navigate, and nearly 97 percent said they were comfortable with the site’s new look.