Website Design and Digital Marketing for Nonprofits: A Case Study (Part I)

At Spigot Design, we take pride in our work with local nonprofits. From website design and development to ongoing content management services and digital marketing, our Park City, Utah-based team goes above and beyond to help Spigot’s nonprofit clients do great things for our community.

That’s why we wanted to put together a series of case studies (okay… it’s also a little bit of a brag) of past and current design, content management and online marketing work Spigot handles for a few of our favorite local nonprofits.

Park City Museum

Start to finish, the redesign and rebuild of the Park City Museum’s website was a fun and interesting challenge. The old site was just that – old. And as a result, it had been updated, changed and added to by many people over the years, leaving the site inconsistent and difficult to navigate. For instance, many pages existed as mini-websites within the main site – and visitors got lost looking for content or basic information.

In addition to the site’s foundational issues, it also failed to show off all of the amazing exhibits, events and services the museum offers to locals and visitors, alike.

It wasn’t going to be an easy fix.

So, after meeting with a representative from the Park City Museum to determine the goals for the project, we got to work. Our designer started by creating an overall design concept for the site to give it – and the museum – a branded look and feel. Our team also worked together to research site traffic and user needs to inform our plan of attack in terms of site hierarchy, navigation and content.

Ultimately, the information on the old site needed to be pared down, reorganized and presented in a way that was both useful to visitors and showed off the best of what the museum has to offer. Check it out.

Design Highlights

• Custom design
• Search engine friendly coding for SEO
• WordPress-powered CMS
• jQuery javascript framework for special effects
• Automatic event and Way We Were feeds sitewide

Content Management & Support

• Provided training to in-house staff for site content management
• Continuing website support and hosting through our sister company, Cinch Web Services

Live Like Sam

Sam Jackenthal was an internationally-ranked freestyle skier and competitive inline rollerblader. We lost Sam all too soon at the age of 15 in a tragic skiing accident in Australia. His father, Ron Jackenthal, created Live Like Sam to honor Sam’s legacy and to inspire young athletes to live as Sam did, with positivity, kindness and gratitude at the forefront of everything they do.

Ron came to Spigot as he was finalizing Live Like Sam’s branding with a tight deadline for the site launch. We worked with Ron and his logo designer to cement various branding elements and collaborated with Ron on his ideas for Live Like Sam’s programming, messaging and partnerships.

We then jumped right into content strategy, wireframing and asset collection. Spigot was able to design, develop, edit provided copy and launch livelikesam.org in just a month’s time.

Design Highlights

• Quick custom design
• Search engine friendly coding for SEO
• WordPress-powered CMS
• Image and video-focused design
  • Ron had good video footage of Sam and we wanted to use it to tell his story. Spigot worked with a videographer to create a short looping video as the marquee on the home page and to cut up several other clips. We also created a gallery for photos and videos. We wanted the site to be very visual and had a lot of image assets to utilize throughout the site.
• Sam’s handprint was brought in as a visual branding element (in “Sam gold”) and “Sam blue” is predominantly used throughout the site. Rich page layouts were created for most pages, keeping the copy minimal while still telling the Live Like Sam story.

Ongoing Content Management & Digital Marketing

Live Like Sam is now positively influencing sports culture and young athletes by creating programs and scholarships based on character. As athletes and parents, that’s a cause we were happy to get behind and one we’re delighted to promote through our digital marketing services.

Since the Live Like Sam site launch February 14, 2019, Spigot has worked closely with Ron to promote, grow and define Live Like Sam’s impact on both the Park City community and the youth sports world at large.

Through our content management services, we keep the Live Like Sam website up-to-date with scholarship information and announcements, community fundraising support, events, blogs and other program updates.

On the digital marketing side, we manage Live like Sam from top to bottom. Our digital marketing team determines editorial strategy, manages social media channels and creates campaigns to both promote Live Like Sam’s efforts and raise funds for the nonprofit. Additionally, our in-house copywriters shape Live Like Sam’s message across all new web pages, blog posts, social media content, email newsletters and partner communications. 

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Stay tuned for Part II: Christian Center of Park City and EATS (Eat Awesome Things)!