Success Stories

Orbees helps a university relations team manage a billion dollar fundraising campaign; redesigns the donor management portal using responsive web design to increase conversions by 65%

Client Challenges:

Our client, the University Relations Department at a large public university oversees the necessary technology infrastructure that supports one of the biggest fundraising campaigns across the higher education community in the US. During their previous campaign which lasted for five years, the university raised approximately USD 3 billion and their team of fundraising professionals were managing up to 280,000 donors. The team of development professionals currently uses a SharePoint based intranet portal that houses critical information related to donor management, reporting, gifts, key milestones and events, marketing material etc. which was developed in 2008, primarily for desktop users.

In preparation for even larger future fundraising campaigns, the team observed an increase in mobile traffic to the intranet site and was alarmed by the high bounce rates. Based on the user feedback, the team realized the need to develop a mobile-optimized website while reducing the need to create and maintain multiple content files. Some of the key challenges the University Relations team wanted to address include:

• Deliver a consistent user experience across all devices
• Enable development professionals to find right information on any screen size
• Improve conversions*

*Conversions are measured as instances such as a fundraising professional using the portal to download information, interacting with UREL/fellow professionals for information/idea exchange etc.

Orbees Solution:

Orbees used agile methodology and worked closely with the client's Marketing and Communications staff in redesigning and face-lifting the SharePoint web application with custom UX design principles.

Responsive web design (RWD):

Orbees used RWD to deliver a consistent user experience, eliminating the need to create multiple websites for individual devices.

• Orbees used media queries, JavaScript events, flexible templates, and responsive images to ensure that the new RWD site adjusts the images, layouts and content visibility depending on the user's device and screen
• Orbees used retina images to deliver high resolution images for high definition screens such as Apple's retina display.
• Used an iterative design process where we designed one screen for all devices before moving onto other screens. This iterative design helped us identify major UX issues upfront and thus saved us significant design and development effort.

Benefits to the client:

• The new responsive website boasts significant improvement in terms of performance, user experience and ease of access to required information
• On desktop, pages per visit increased by 30% and average visit duration increased by 80%
• On mobile, pages per visit increased by 120%, and average visit duration increased by 200%
• Overall conversions across all devices (measured as interactions among the employees themselves and among employees and donors) increased by 65%
• Fundraising and development professionals witnessed major improvements in ease of use and overall experience