People Places, Inc. Website Design

The Challenge:
People Places, Inc. www.peopleplaces.org (a nonprofit foster care agency serving the Shenandoah Valley) approached Stephen Hockman to re-design their website. Within the last year, the organization had began to re-focus their efforts on fine-tuning their brand within the marketplace. A new logo was designed and professional design elements were created to bring together marketing and promotional materials. Stephen Hockman’s job was to create a website that tied seamlessly with the new branding elements while focusing on enhancing the users overall experience.

CLICK IMAGE TO LAUNCH WEBSITE

The Solution:
People Places, Inc. was a great creative challenge because the organization wanted to accomplish three things with the new website:

1. Educate current and potential foster care parents about the variety of child welfare services they have to offer.
2. Promote their group training services other foster care agencies can purchase, such as the Parenting Skills Training (PST) program.
3. And, have it fit seamlessly with existing branding and design materials.

To achieve these goals, I felt it was imperative that we provide a proper balance between the non-commercial and commercial services. On the homepage, for example, you’ll find four graphics that promote click through to learn more about “Becoming a Foster/Adoptive parent,” “Referring A Child Today” “More about Children Services,” and “Finding an Office Near You.” I contrasted this with using only two graphics to promote Training/Consultation. One that served to directly promote the PST program and another to take visitors directly to the Training/Consultation section of the website.

To make it easier for users to find what they were looking for (as well as to serve as cross promotion for other sections of the site) I used a variety of graphics and links on each page to take visitors related areas.

As for promoting group training sessions like the PST, I decided to break that section up into three pages: Main information, New Features, and Video Samples. This allowed me to break up the content to be more easily digested by the user, while also promoting click-through to further engage the visitor with the website (studies show that the longer a user is on a website the better change it is that they will buy from you.) I also placed a Call to Action “Order Now for Immediate Shipment” at the bottom of each page to encourage purchases.

Other important elements on the site include:

• Using a variety of stock foster children and family photos throughout the site to engage visitors and give them a sense of the “foster care environment.”
• Creating a News & Media section (and Video Samples page for PST) that displayed Flash video samples of Tv Ads and training materials.
• Independent Living Services Class List with expandable details and information.
• An easy-to-use Contact Us form.
• Rotating sidebar quotes from foster parents, group training session clients, and current staff members that serves to add credibility for the variety of services People Places offers.

All-in-all this was a great website to work on and has a lot of unique features. So take a look and let me know what you think! Or, if you’re in need of a website design yourself, please feel free to Contact Me for a FREE Quote.

Software/Skills Used:

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