YMCA of Greater Charlotte 2017-2018 Website Redesign Update
Jason L. Antonic | Association Director of Digital Strategy and User Experience
Overview Thank you for taking the time to review UX and Technology milestones for 2017/2018 as related to the development of the new website system for the YMCA of Greater Charlotte. This presentation, while not exhaustive, will cover each of the following topics in detail.
Personas
Content Strategy
Mission Site
Knowing Whom We Serve
A Proven Approach
Elevating the Mission Narrative
To build the best digital property possible, it is essential to know and understand for whom it is being built and why.
Establishing a site that is useful and understood by both users and search engines requires an informed content strategy and information architecture.
Following a higher education content strategy model, the Mission Site elevates and improves our organizational narrative and voice around Y Mission.
Improvement Objectives
Search Engine Optimization
Y360
Tactical Strategies for Digital Wins
To Impact, We Must First Be Seen
A New Way to Manage What Is
Input was gleaned from users, internal audits, and external experts and standards to form heuristic requirements for change.
The new website is built to be fully search engine optimized employing all best known practices and methods to increase our organic index position(s).
This powerful new proprietary tool built on a newly designed relational database lets us place content, data, and information precisely where we need it.
Personas - Knowing Whom We Serve In early 2017, UX saw the organizational need to establish well-researched and developed customer persona archetypes in order to gain valuable insights and discover needs, motivations, barriers and other factors that impact acceptance, engagement and delivery. This work enables customer-centric approach to experience design which is informed, empathetic, and therefore preemptive. For the Association to truly optimize experience in the digital channel (and beyond), this work is best understood and performed through customer journey mapping and business process modeling, which are based on a cohort of archetypal personas.
YMCA Personas In order to develop accurate and reliable personas we leveraged a combination of internal and external expertise from cross-disciplinary teams. Our contributors have professional, agency, and consulting backgrounds in user experience, business analytics, content marketing, product design, customer service, and program delivery.
True Archetypes
Highly Contextualized
Our new adult YMCA personas are archetypal representations of both our participant base and the communities we serve within our trading areas. This development leveraged extensive voice-of-customer research performed by Voccii, Candescence, and SEER. We leveraged internal and external sources of market and ethnographic data including U.S. Census reports.
UX analyzed our own qualitative data from Personify, AMP, Google Analytics, marketing campaigns and other sources to validate participant personas. Data was derived from transactions, digital traffic, call center data, focus groups, and campaign performance metrics.
Anti Participant Dispositions While it is meaningful to understand and appreciate those who are actively engaged participants and net-promoters, it is equally important to understand those who may wholly, or even just from time-to-time, become disengaged with one's products, services and who have either lost sight of the intrinsic value proposition - perhaps even dropping out of participation all together - or have begun to wane in their enthusiasm.
The Dispositions
Empathy
UX established through SME best practices, a representative set of 10 potential attitudes or dispositions which are barriers to a positively engaged experience. These dispositions are not intended to reflect a permanent fixed personality, rather they are fluid and meant to be applied appositively to any of our personas to help us role play and answer questions like: "How would Judy react to an email asking for a financial gift if she feels disconnected from the Y Mission?"
By diving deep into the motivations, misgivings, attitudes, and mindsets of the dispositions, we can start to work through conversion strategies for our interactions with our participants whether it be in a marketing communication, at the sales and service desk, on a phone call, or even just in passing in the hallway. Visual cues are presented as facial expression archetypes to help us identify with non-verbal communication. Conversion strategies are offered to help with operational roleplaying/training exercises.
Operational Integration It's one thing to have personas at one's disposal for ready reference, and it's another thing entirely to influence an organization to adopt the practice of using personas on a daily business, keeping them at the forefront of the customer experience models we are designing. So far the adoption of our customer personas has met with strong advocation and the positive traction has led to some excellent conversations especially where product and service design are concerned.
Creating Operational Awareness
Gameifying Sales and Service Training
In 2017 and ongoing, PDFs were circulated to business directors to include our UX personas in their daily operational activities around program development, product/service marketing, and narrative.
In 2018 UX began working with membership to create an operational training game which incorporates personas. The activity is to select a persona, apply an attitude/disposition and then role play to solve for the problem scenario provided on the purple card. Other game players can discuss and vote for the best solution, awarding points and providing meaningful takeaways.
Below is a live digital copy of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte's UX Personas.
UX Journey Mapping with Participant Personas With customer personas fully built out, UX then began work implementing the addition of experience and journey maps into our product/experience design process. This way of visualizing a business process allows us to see how a customer would experience a product, service, or path through the lens of a particular archetypal cohort. By subjecting the the same business process to different personas, we can truly learn how to create a path to positive experience for the widest array of participants. Doing so also lets us identify, investigate, and solve for edge cases, fail cases, and "black holes" where servicing risks dropping off.
Understanding Motivation Helps us Craft Path Over the course of a full-cycled engagement through a constructed business process we also overlay a psychological change model called Stages of Change (DiClemente & Prochaska) as follows: Pre-Contemplation > Contemplation > Preparation > Action > (or Relapse) > Maintenance.
Content Strategy - A Proven Approach One of the greatest challenges facing the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, and by extension all YMCA associations, is how to effectively promote activities, programs, memberships, and registration while concurrently creating awareness for the mission, for community need, and of our role in making a positive and lasting impact through cause-driven initiatives.
Conversations with participants about volunteerism, giving, and mission are not the same kind of conversation that one has regarding class schedules, child care, open swim times, branch amenities, etc. In order to focus on one narrative in the same digital space, it necessitates the subordination of whichever narrative is not in present focus. One can certainly "salt" a membership conversation with mission language, but to clearly articulate our cause requires attention to a focused narrative. One industry that has managed this duality quite effectively is higher education. Universities realize that the conversation one has with a prospective student is far different than is to be had with a current student or an alumnus. One doesn't really go into detail about the capital campaign needs or the Dean's Discretionary Fund Annual Report with a new student who simply wants to know about the meal plan and the size of a dorm room. Following this model allows to have the right conversation at the right time with the right audience.
E Tribus Unum - Integrating the Narratives Just as a university has a single website with distinct areas for different purposes, the YMCA of Greater Charlotte's new Information Architecture follows the model below. These three areas below will be seamlessly integrated for an easy, delightful experience. The user will be in control of what content they want and when. If they want to explore programs and activities, we give them a robust area for that. If they want to "Explore the Mission" or learn more about ways they can "Increase Your Impact" they are rewarded with an equally engaging experience that elevates the cause of the YMCA. Each engagement area will be "cross-pollinated" with teasers to draw users to interest areas on well-architected paths geared toward conversion. For example, if someone is exploring the mission and wants to know WHY the YMCA offers basketball, they can read about that and THEN be offered an opportunity to participate or enroll their child. Conversely, if someone is looking at basketball schedules at a particular branch, we may catch their eye with a link for them to learn WHY we offer this program and the positive impact it has on our community - this reinforces their engagement.
Mission Engagement
Participant Engagement
Authenticated Space
The focus audience for this narrative is:
The focus audience for this narrative is:
This utilitarian area of the site is for:
Current and Potential Donors Current and Potential Volunteers Career Seekers Corporate/Community Partners and Sponsors Financial Partners/Sponsors Other YMCAs News/Press/Media Relations Churches and other non-profits
Current Members Prospective and Former Members Local Residents Local Search Engines Competitors Individuals, Families, Children Schools and Communities
Completed/Staged as of 2/1/2018
In Development as of 5/15/2018
This area speaks primarily about:
This area speaks primarily about:
Our Mission Opportunities for Giving Our Community Impact Our Staff Working and Volunteering with the Y Outreach Highlights Cases for Giving Relevant Facts and Figures Capital Needs and Improvements Association Events Newsletters Press Releases Career Opportunities
Main Calls to Action: Donate, Volunteer, Partner, Work
Membership Branches, Facilities, Amenities, Schedules Activities: Programs, Classes Team and Individual Sports Childcare Camps Community Events Health and Wellness Activities Promotions, Sales, Programs, Incentives Calls to Action (Sign Up, Enroll, Register) Lead Capture Forms Aquatics Faith/Citizenship Life Learning Classes Fine Arts Programs Main Calls to Action: Join, Participate, Enroll, Register
Enrolling in Membership Program Registration and Purchase Account Mangement Program Participants Guests of the YMCA Any purchaser of digital offerings eCommerce Data Layers which serve information to the Mission and Participant areas of the website (at left). Personify, Y Camp Life, Communications, Y360, AMP. This area speaks about: Forms eBusiness Processes Activity Schedules Membership Pricing Program Search Facility Schedules
Main Calls to Action: Log In, Manage Account, Forms
Mission Site By establishing a dedicated content area focused exclusively on Mission Engagement, we are successfully increasing awareness, engagement, and connection with the mission of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte in the digital channel. The net result of elevation of this narrative is that we expect to foster increases in charitable giving and volunteerism while reducing membership attrition.
Elevating the YMCA Mission As stated above, the university model of content strategy is the market-tested approach for our presentation format and is one that allows us to elevate and enrich the discussion to the correct audience cohort, at the most appropriate time in their online navigation. With this new approach we expect:
Increased Participation
Increased Volunteerism
Increased Online Giving
By creating a better awareness that the impact an active and engaged membership has on the success of our mission, we expect cancellation and attrition rates to decrease over time.
The new website gives users a clear opportunity to "Explore the Mission" and make a stronger connection to the the way we impact and serve our communities.
We have now consolidated all of our online giving to a single transactional platform.
By resolving the disconnect between an activity/participation mindset and a community/mission impact mindset, we expect new members coming through the new website to have a stronger moral obligation to maintaining their membership(s).
The Mission Engagement area has clear navigational paths to our newly launched VolunteerMatters platform which provides meaningful infrastructure for volunteer-related activities across the association.
Additionally we expect an increase in attendance for community events and workshops that are promoted within the website.
For example, when one is reading about Y Readers there is an easy link to follow which lets users review all available volunteer opportunities across the association.
Connecting direct contributions and our new and improved Peer-to-Peer platform are the new UX-designed forms, which are easier to use, more legible, accessible, and brand compliant. Financial development now has automation where they previously did not, saving countless hours of manually posting transactions from paypal into our Blackbaud system of record. Now all donations come into a single reporting structure with customized report writing capabilities. We are also saving .4% per transaction. This meets our Vital Few objective of reducing operational expense by 3%.
A Responsive Mission Following the university model of content strategy, this first portion of our new website allows users to explore and make a strong mission connection.
A Clearer Call to Action Important programs, community needs, and areas of impact are no longer subordinated in the content map where they were buried in PDFs or tear sheets. By giving prominence to the humanitarian causes which drive our organization, we create a better opportunity for participants to engage their community through YMCA initiatives.
With a Fresh Experience New and Improved written content, photography, and promotional videos developed in collaboration with our association marketing team elevate the quality of the conversation with prospective donors, volunteers, employees, foundations, sponsors, community partners, and members of the media.
Available Across All Device Channels Built using the OpenY's content framework and architecture, Drupal 8, our new mission site content factors for all major device display sizes. We observed two years of recorded online behavior with Google Analytics and built the new framework to respond to the most frequently used device display parameters and browser technology.
New Content Areas As a result of elevating the narrative and creating an information architecture focused on mission and organizationally supportive content, we now have many exciting new pages which highlight the great work we do and programs we offer. Here are some of the many new pages we've co-developed with copywriting contribution from our marketing department. These pages highlight programs that are very difficult to find on the current site.
Accessible Activities This new content area exposes the great work the Y is doing with offering accessible activities for families who have children with special needs. "Creating opportunities for all people to build healthy spirits, minds and bodies has been at the core of the Y’s mission for years. It continues as our driving force today. We serve people from all parts of our community to find ways where a person’s physical, mental and spiritual gifts are not just recognized, but also celebrated."
Diversity and Inclusion Diversity initiatives now have a prominent position in our Mission Narrative. We have incorporated the new Y_USA Dimensions of Diversity wheel graphic into this area. All of the diversity initiatives we offer are allocated under this content area. "At the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, we believe in honoring our Christian mission, living our cause, acting in accordance with our values, and placing the greater good above self. It is our belief that, in a diverse world, we are stronger when our doors are open to all."
Help Raise Funds This new content area drives members and non-members alike to help us raise funds for our Annual Campaign by way of Blackbaud's TeamRaiser platform. 2017 brought in $139k through P2P with very little promotion. By giving more prominence we expect substantial increases. 2018 soft launch is trending toward a 52% increase over 2107 P2P giving. "Now more than ever, the Y has an urgent responsibility to connect divides in our communities and bring people together, and we need your help. When you fundraise to support kids, adults and families who need us most, you are helping remove barriers and fill gaps that make “us” possible."
Join a Community Project Join a community project page surfaces volunteer opportunities and connects new and returning volunteers with our new VolunteerMatters platform launched in Q1 of 2017. "Volunteering with the Y doesn’t just make the lives of others better, it changes yours, too. When you join one of our community projects, you discover a sense of belonging as you work alongside others for a common cause. The Y is more than a gym or a fitness center or meeting space. We are a community that transforms lives."
Leadership Team New and improved bios and photos of our association senior leadership team provides a stronger community connection for our team. Additionally this page lists all 2018 Association Board of Directors and Trustees.
Legacy Giving Typically planned-estate or legacy giving is driven heavily by relationship management with potential donors. The industry approach is to feature the point of contact offering a virtual first introduction. This also gives our Planned Giving Director the ability to drive contacts to this page for a quick and friendly overview. The approach builds trust through transparency. " Legacy gifts (endowments and gifts from estates) help sustain and strengthen our Y’s ability to serve our
community for generations to come. Whether you put your donation to work today or after your lifetime, you are making a lasting impact on the lives of kids, adults and families who need us most."
Make a Gift - Ways of Giving Our new online giving capture page integrates and aligns our four areas of impact with causes and cases for giving to the Annual Campaign. Each navigation block leads to a content page with a video CTA and short form capture to begin the donation process. Donation button is persistent in the masthead and accessible on all pages. "We can’t do it alone. We count on the generosity of our donors to make a better us possible. Every dollar donated stays local and helps address our community’s most critical needs. When you give to the Y, you partner with us to provide life-changing programs and services focused on the following areas of impact:"
Military Outreach So many of our members, participants, volunteers, and donors have a background in military, law enforcement, or another similar area of public service. By creating a narrative which speaks directly to the interests and needs of these servant-leaders, we provide clear paths to volunteerism, employment, reduced-fee membership, and child care opportunities. "Deployment can be a stressful and uncertain time for our nation’s servicemen and women and their families. In partnership with the Armed Services YMCA and the Department of Defense, the Y is proud to offer memberships and respite childcare services to eligible military families and personnel to give them extra support during the difficult time when loved ones are away from home."
New American Welcome Center The YMCA of Greater Charlotte is proud to be a New American Welcome Center, an initiative launched by YMCA of the USA in 2017 by which YMCAs foster an environment that encourages immigrant integration and community cohesion. The YMCA’s New American Welcome Center is designed to help immigrants and newcomers fully integrate into American Society and prepare receiving communities to be welcoming and inclusive.
Work at the YMCA Our new career pages offer an improved career openings feed, a lead capture form for those who want to attend future career fairs/events, and relevant video/written content that impresses candidates with our work culture, benefits, development programs, and diversity policies. "From inspiring youth in day camp with a sense of belonging, encouraging busy parents with nutrition advice for their family or helping underserved teens accomplish academic success — the Y is more than just a gym, and working here is more than a job. It’s a mission to transform lives, especially the young, and encourage all to develop their fullest potential in spirit, mind and body."
Improvement Objectives Tactical Strategies for Digital Wins. User feedback, internal audits, objective UX standards of best practice, and reviews by external experts combined to drive our key requirements for change and improvement: Make prominent the four areas of impact Elevate the five ways to "Join the Mission" Make giving (online) easy Establish clear ways to "Increase Your Impact" Improve site aesthetics and overall delight Improve and correct accessibility failures Improve usability
Make Prominent The Four Key Areas of Impact Following the university model of content strategy, this first portion of our new website allows users to explore and make a strong mission connection.
Focus Areas All of the mission programs and menu information architecture has been reorganized so that all of our community impact and other programs are brandaligned (Y-USA) under the focus areas of: For Youth Development For Healthy Living For Social Responsibility
Key Impact Areas The YMCA of Greater Charlotte has identified four major impacts which classify the programs from a funding alignment perspective. Formerly known internally as six "buckets of giving," these were restructured into four Areas of Impact and are featured prominently on the Mission Home Page: Access and Belonging for All Community Health Challenges Drowning Prevention Youth Potential and Academic Success
Establish the Five Ways to Join the Mission Following the university model of content strategy, this first portion of our new website allows users to explore and make a strong mission connection.
Prominent Menu Location
Become a Member
For anyone wanting to get involved at any level with the YMCA, all of the main paths of engagement fall under "Join the Mission," and are given prominent menu position.
Important programs, community needs, and areas of impact are no longer subordinated
Become a Volunteer New and Improved written content, photography, and promotional videos
Make a Financial Gift New and Improved written content, photography, and promotional videos
Partner with the Y Important programs, community needs, and areas of impact are no longer subordinated
Work at the YMCA New and Improved written content, photography, and promotional videos
Fundraising, Elevated - Make Giving Easy 2017 saw 20% of all online giving attributed to Peer-to-Peer giving through our TeamRaiser platform. This was done with little fanfare, by only a few active parties out of select branches, and was not promoted on the main website. As part of the Digital Strategy for 2018, we have improved the donor experience by not only uplifting the design to align with the new website(s), but have also created clear paths on the existing and forthcoming website to drive platform adoption behavior. A planned release strategy with association wide email marketing campaign promoting the TeamRaiser platform is expected to drive many net-new donors to the YMCA in support of our mission. By abandoning our PayPal payment gateway and moving all donors to the Blackbaud/Luminate gateway, all of the donor transaction records are now consolidated into a single system of record, with common reporting, eliminating the operational need to manually post and record hundreds of individual transactions between SOR's, all at a reduction in transactional fee expense of 0.4%. Between the automation and the fee savings, this project has a net-zero fiscal impact and positions us for significant growth. Since launching this revised platform in March of 2018 we are trending toward a 52% increase over LY for Peer-to-Peer online donations alone.
Funding Goals Even though 2017 potential donors lacked a strong path to giving on our website, and given that no promotion was done surrounding P2P, online giving performed modestly well in the digital channel.
Total 2017 Online Donations
45% Direct Giving $813,025
35% Company Matched Giving 20% Peer-to-Peer Giving
Consolidating the 2018 Donor Experience In addition to a full UX redesign of the online donation form experience, the new Events Module in Y360 allows event publishers the ability to link events like races, etc directly to TeamRaiser pages on an automated basis. This means a marketing content author is not needed to provide, publish, or manage this information on the new public website. This represents additional savings in human capital expenditure.
Establish Clear Ways To "Increase Your Impact" The Mission area of the website encourages migratory participation: donors becoming volunteers, members becoming donors, volunteers to members and so on.
Establishing the Case The site consistently builds a strong emotional and tactical case for an individual or corporation to "Join the Mission" of the YMCA. The idea being that when you engage in any of the five key engagement areas, you are effectively "Joining the Mission" of the YMCA. Each program content area features Call-to-Actions which lead to Giving, Learning More, Volunteering, or Contacting Us.
Increasing Impact We now make it clear to participants that there are many ways to impact one's community through involvement at the YMCA. Our goal is that our members would not engage unilaterally in membership activities, but that they would seek to extend themselves into their communities through additional forms of engagement like volunteerism or online giving.
Improve Design Aesthetic and Overall Delight The Mission area of the website encourages migratory participation: donors becoming volunteers, members becoming donors, volunteers to members and so on.
Current - Print Design Drives Web Graphics The current website faces many design challenges from users, our business lines, UX and other external qualified reviewers. Let's experience the Y in real life moments vs. staged graphics Current theme is too "cartoony" or childish and not relevant to adult users Imagery on the site often illegible, unappealing, dated design Overuse of color makes pages too intense and overly stimulating, loss of focus It's hard to get a sense of each unique branch experience "Hard to know what to focus on." Not sure what is clickable, what is a button "Hard to find what I am looking for." Different areas of the site don't feel or look connected Site fails accessibility audits
New - UX Architecture Drives Interaction Design The current website will apply gestalt principles (uniform connectedness, continuity, parallelism/alignment) and best practices of UX design to improve the design quality. All web properties will share common/similar themes and mastheads Like information will be grouped correctly User journey maps will govern navigation Design is not influenced by subjectivity, but by observed online behavior and A/B analysis over time. Color will be used as accent, and more sparingly Site will use interactive UI elements to create delight Site will shift in tone to primarily target adults, and in youth areas be more child friendly New promotional content will conform to more rigid quality standards Will be responsive and compatible with touch/gestures as well as mouse Positive and Negative Space will be properly managed Site will rely less on stock or graphic design but on photo/video, and architected page and banner templates Site design will comply to WCAG 2.0 AA Standard Site is being reviewed for buy-in by Open Y and Y-USA
Improve and Correct Accessibility Failures Our current website fails accessibility audits for such issues as visual contrast, image alternative text, lack of audio/video transcripts, and myriad other easily corrected criteria.
Applying WCAG 2.0 AA Standard for all Digital The current website faces does not meet the minimum standard used by most organizations nationally for accessibility. As standing for and serving "Access for All" this is a highly important factor in our redesign efforts. Ensure rules of contrast are followed and applied for all designed elements Ensure all websafe font rules are followed in code and as rendered for legibility Ensure site is usable and also useful to those with cognitive issues, colorblindness, or other visual/haptic impairment Ensure that site is usable and useful to those with lower technical acumen including elderly and foreign newcomers Ensure the site is usable via Google Translated versions for Spanish Language
Improve Usability A number of opportunities exist to improve the overall usability of the website:
Usability Objectives Increase size of form fields, especially on mobile devices Incorporate touch screen elements for menus and other features Make the site more responsive to the most commonly used mobile devices Make it easier to read, understand, and process information Eliminate competition for focus Employ common correct controls for navigation, selection, form commitment, etc. (banners are not buttons) Require less, or more appropriate, user input Improve ways of finding programs (2063 camps!?!) Reduce mental fatigue, frustration Replace mega curtain menu
SEO - To Impact, We Must First Be Seen One of the main observations made by UX in early 2017 is that the YMCA, although a leader in fitness and class experience, was almost non-existent when it came to having an online presence indexed by the major search engines in our trading areas. With over 40,000 website pages having no Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - it became an immediate priority to research, discover, understand, and finally solve our SEO issues as quickly as possible.
UX engaged our vendor, CGR Creative, for a full site audit and immediately UX and Development went to work on resolving as many of the issues as possible. During this process UX discovered that Group Exercise classes did not have their own true pages, but were simply part of an application which produced a list of classes without offering much context, information, or supporting imagery to encourage someone to participate.
The solution architecture detailed below is become the founding proof-of-concept and proof-of-value in the approach for how we are creating and delivering content to the new website through sophisticated and highly automated processes.
Improve Search Engine Visibility Regular SEO audits show we are significantly lagging in performance for the current site in multiple areas (at left) which have not been sufficiently rectified. Poor organic SEO indexing forces us into the gambit of expensive paid search engine advertising to gain exposure.
SEO Audits The following opportunities exist which we are solving in the upcoming site: Improve organic SEO to all published pages Incorporate rich cards to send our class and event data to google Refactor our sitemap to ensure all pages are properly crawled Create meta content for our pages and images Increase our Alexa Pagerank to improve the authority and digital equity/value of our domain (ymcacharlotte.org) Increase and govern the quality of inbound links Improve URL and filename semantics/taxonomy Use of structured data to inform enhanced localized search results
Proof of Value - Group Exercise In mid 2017, and in order resolve very low web traffic to group exercise activities, UX re-architected a custom internally-developed middleware solution layer to automatically generate GroupEx pages which did not need to be maintained by a content manager. The new page architecture produced huge gains and increased the exposure of our mission to over half a million new people in only the first six months after the improvements were launched. This tested and proven architectural approach became the proof-of-concept and the driving strategic paradigm for the work being done for the new website.
SEO IMPACT The new GroupEx pages created in this solution produced 152 net-new pages for classes, fully optimized for search engines. Within 30 days of solution launch, 127 of these pages were freely indexed by Google on page one of search results, exposing these classes to literally hundreds of thousands more pageviews. GroupEx recorded a sizable increase in participation and attendance for the same period.
Organic Search Engine Indexing 2017
84.1% of total GroupEx class pages appearing are now indexed page 1 on Google
Group Ex Web Traffic Scorecard 693,906
507,897
21.81%
Increased Total Page Views
Increased Unique Pageviews
Incr. in % of All Traffic - Increased Focus
53.72% Gain
53.65% Gain
21.81% Gain
2017
1,291,703
2017
1,067,863
2017
29.98%
2016
597,797
2016
494,960
2016
8.17%
What Does This Mean? This means that because of the new way of presenting our class information online, we experienced a substantial increase by over half a million new page views to the group exercise pages over the same prior year period. Using a Vital Few benchmark, our goal is to increase our reach by 5%. We surpassed this digitally by 48.65% with a 53.65% gain. As best as we were able to track class enrollment, we saw a similar uptick in class participation. The Validated Approach: Automate page creation for like content, Template the page construct, Create unique search engine optimized pages for each class.
Y360 - A New Way of Managing What Is After much internal analysis coupled with extensive discussions with Open Y developers, we realized that moving to Drupal 8 from Kentico gave us a unique opportunity to develop our new website like software - completely decoupled from the display layer. By eliminating the dependencies on a traditional content management system, we found we were free to construct a middleware services layer that gives us complete freedom and access. By aggregating data points, creating a sophisticated relational database, and using that architecture to automate content to the website, we are able to deal with very complex data relationships and serve them nimbly not only to a website but, over time, multiple digital platforms including mobile apps, digital signage, and more. Y360 is an easy to use interface that gives the organization true mastery over its content. It is a proprietary intellectual software property internally developed and innovated right here in the YMCA of Greater Charlotte.
Reducing the Time It Takes to Manage Content Currently, managing content on the Kentico site is laborious, tedious, time consuming, inefficient, and lacking in consistent quality assurance.
Current - Contributor Managed The current website, application architecture has many publishers producing inconsistent content at variable times. As a result, Pages are not being well managed Information is often missing or outdated PDFs are being orphaned Updating one small bit of information can require doing it in more than 20 places Content and design quality often gives way expedience Most of the website is not optimized for search engines requiring unnecessary campaign expense Site has not been made Accessible to WCAG 2.0 AA standard Publishers have direct access to production, sidestepping any formal Q/A
New - Highly Automated The new site is built on a highly complex series of integrations which provide exceptional quality controls and automations for creating content which is similar in nature. By updating the appropriate database, the website is constructed automatically, eliminating in most cases the need for a content entry manager to maintain myriad pages. This new system will result in a gain of hundreds of available man hours across IT and Marketing, and allows business users the efficiency of managing publishing to the web without being an expert in programming or marketing. Newsletters, events, facility hours, schedules are all automated. Even imagery syndication is automated. New publishers will not have access to production servers, only dev/test servers.
Connecting What Has Never Been Before In the real world, everything is connected. UX and IT co-architected a sophisticated relational database to allow us to integrate and syndicate content types across the entire web property the way it is in the real world. This means that anything related to a branch automatically gets syndicated to that page, or anything related to a community partner appears on that partner's page. All automated!
Relationships are Hard Our new relational database underlying the Y360 servicing tool is the "brain" or "neural" network of all things YMCA. It establishes hard data connections between elements allowing us to compile information from multiple perspectives and directions. This means we can create published content that is automatically curated vs. manually managed.
Did We @mention Tags? By use of a complex tagging system we are able to create an unlimited number of web components or modules which call information from the Y360 database using these tags. Need Y Readers Volunteer Projects? PT Jobs at Lake Norman? Events supporting Youth Development? All the press releases which mention Atrium Health? A photo gallery of Todd Tibbits using only shots where he is wearing glasses? Easy! We can use tags from Y360 AND our cloud based Bynder tool to get exactly the content we need!
Y360 - An Elegant Web Servicing Tool Built on an Angular/Bootstrap/.NET core, the Y360 is an authenticated web servicing tool which can be connected through API's to an unlimited amount of digital platforms, including OpenY, Drupal8, Bynder, Hubspot, and more... This revolutionary tool gives us total control over our content.
From Complex to Simple The Y360 tool makes it simple to manage very difficult things. It creates a central hub for all information that needs to be published and creates real data points for all things: Branch and facility hours Amenities and equipment Roles and permissionms Newsletters, press release Events management Community partners Activity/class scheduling Instructor management ...and much much more!
Facilities
Publishing
Administration
Manage location, hours, geo fences,
Manage events, press releases, newsletters,
Manage user rights and roles,
amenities, equipment and more!
community partners, and more!
create/edit/delete custom taxonomies.
Simple Modular Interface Drives Consistent Experience Y360 is a a highly usable interface users who want to publish relevant content but may lack the necessary technical or digital design skills. The interface ensures consistency. All pages are created through consistent architecture not by way of manual process which is subject to degrading or variable quality and oversight. Y360 Screen Resulting Web Page
Community Events Management Used to publish association and branch level events (races, prayer breakfast, etc). Tag with Mission Impact, Event type, Partner, Initiative, Dates, Registration, Volunteer Project, P2P project, event contact, location. Publishes a unique marketable page on a dedicated URL. 1000s of pages can be created this way with uniformity.
Community Partners and Affiliates Constructs consistent partner pages and aggregates all press releases and events related to that partner as a case study. We encourage our partners to link to this page which surfaces the joint impact we are making. Also honors the partner for funding or sponsorships at variable levels. There is no limit to the amount of partners.
Kronos Job Listing Integration The new Kronos integration makes job listings more legible, searchable, and therefore more accessible in the new website. We created a custom search tool which yields fast results. Also no Part Time and Full Time jobs are on the same page in tabbed view easing navigation.
News and Press The News and Press module allows our corporate communication team the ability to publish press releases or cite media references where the YMCA is featured. Stories can be tagged and syndicated.
Newsletters The new newsletters module allows a non technical user the ability to create a properly formatted eNewsletter to promote their business line. Allows for ghost writing, tagging, staging, future release dates.
VolunteerMatters Project Listing Integration The new website comes with custom developed integrated feeds so that volunteer projects are searchable as easily as jobs (above). We also have the ability to offer parametric views so someone coming from the Y Readers page can be taken directly to pre-filtered Y Readers projects
Bynder - Cloud-Based Digital Asset Management Currently all photos and designed digital assets are or controlled by a single custodian on a limited access shared drive. This approach significantly hinders operational efficiency around access, use, governance, and persistence of all of our digital assets. By use of a permission-based cloud digital asset management system, we remove illogical chokepoints and make our approved assets available for immediate use without having to wait for a curator to work through a request pipeline. This saves hundreds of man hours over thousands of requests on an an annualized basis and takes image request fulfillments from days down to seconds. Licensed access to the tool is very affordable and makes us extremely efficient. Moving to the cloud means that we never risk losing our assets if a local hard drive fails.
Find it Fast! The Bynder solution integrates seamlessly to our new web application architecture and allows us instant access to images. Full custom taxonomy for powerful filtering Creates full SEO tagging on the images Image retrieval in seconds No more digging through folders Complex tagging Full Version Control Integrated to Drupal 8 Integrated to Y360 Can be integrated to Hubspot Can be integrated to Digital Signage Powerful cloud based search Image curation Supports all digital asset types and media Can use one asset many places vs creating local copies (logos etc)
The Next Frontier - Staying Ahead of the Curve Staying at the tip of the spear in an ever-changing industry and overall economy requires that we stay well researched on emerging technology, trends, capabilities, and new ways of improving business process and customer experience. Of all the technologies we are learning about, the two that really stand out are "Machine Learning" and "Device Skill Development."
Machine Learning - What is it? Machine learning was born from pattern recognition and the theory that computers can learn without being programmed to perform specific tasks; researchers interested in artificial intelligence wanted to see if computers could learn from data. As machines are exposed to new data, they are now able to independently adapt, learning from previous computations to produce reliable, repeatable decisions and results. Watch a Basic Overview.
Fast
Accurate
Adaptive
While many machine learning algorithms have been around for a long time, the ability to automatically apply complex mathematical calculations to big data – over and over, faster and faster – is a recent development.
Generalization in Machine Learning is the ability of a learning machine to perform accurately on new, unseen examples/tasks after having experienced a learning data set.
Machine Learning It is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that machines should be able to learn and adapt through experience.
Predictive
Detects Anomalies
Anticipates Loss
Machine learning focuses on prediction, based on known properties learned from the training data, and then focuses on the discovery of previously unknown properties in the data.
It constructs a model from a given normal training data set, and then tests the likelihood of a anomalies to be generated by the learned/discoverable data model.
Loss functions uses the discrepancy between the predictions of the training data model and actual discoverable problems to generate loss prediction (membership).
Skill Development and Machine Learning on YMCA Data Below is some of the research work we are doing in UX to see how we can best leverage our data for new learning, and new capabilities
For YMCA Participants Evaluating how Alexa Skills can connect to YMCA scheduled data. Strength: What makes this product or service a top solution for consumers? Weakness: Where does this company falter? Learn About Alexa
For YMCA Business Users Learning new ways to discover patterns and model from our Data Strength: What makes this product or service a top solution for consumers? Weakness: Where does this company falter?
Learn About IBM Watson
Your UX Design and Development Team Who's putting their blood, sweat and tears into this venture? Meet your YMCA of Greater Charlotte Digital Development Team.
Jason Antonic
Mark Deering
Rob Rosello
Director of Digital Strategy and UX Provides omni-channel UX architecture, graphic and interaction, design, digital strategy, UAT, defines and roadmaps digital projects and adoption strategy. Lead UX solution architect.
Application Development Manager Leads the core development team and database analysts. Feasibility analysis. Back end solution architecture. Lead database developer.
Application Delivery Manager Leads the technical business analysis team and manages project deliverables, scope, resources, timelines, and vendor engagement.
Russell Gentry
John Bailey
Brandon Ingram
Application Developer Lead developer on internal facing custom application Y360 servicing layer. UI and App Dev responsibilities.
Front End Developer Lead developer on customer facing Drupal 8 php website. Authors/manages api integration with our internal and external data and application layers.
Business Analyst Assists with business requirement gathering, use case development, business process design, and Functional Q/A testing.
YMCA UX Jason L. Antonic | Association Director of Digital Strategy and User Experience
400 East Morehead Street, 7th Floor - Room 713 jason.antonic@ymcacharlotte.org | 704-792-8799
For more information or to schedule a conversation... Let's Talk! you@youremail.com
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