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About

The LAMP is bringing 21st-century survival skills to all New Yorkers through vital, hands-on services that help people navigate and thrive in this loud-media environment.

The Challenge

Since 2007, the LAMP has provided training and resources for more than 3,000 youth, parents and educators to help them become critical participants in the media landscape. The organization needed a website redesign that would not only align with its vision but also provide useful resources for core audiences.

What we did

Starting in 2014, Whole Whale worked closely with The LAMP team to rebuild their site to better serve the mission of the organization.

Website Development

Whole Whale started the LAMP’s site built by doing meticulous research on the organization and its target users. We overlaid the staff and board’s goals with user behavior data to extract important engagement elements that we would later measure in Google Analytics.

After several strategic conversations and countless data investigations, we were well-equipped to build a site that lent a voice to students, parents, and educators speaking out against oversaturated media.

Aware that style follows substance, we made sure to first design a solid information architecture that would help users easily navigate the site. We then created wireframes that specified the site’s layouts and functionalities. With a new foundation in place, we moved on to assembling style tiles and mockups.

Design, data, and tech coming together is undeniably beautiful, and we made sure to support the designed features with a robust tech infrastructure. A 79% decrease in load time on the new site came as a result of server upgrade and optimization of content delivery. We then went above and beyond the scope of our project to negotiate and procure the lowest rate possible for their exact brand domain – TheLAMP.org.

Information Design

The Whole Whale team communicated with The LAMP’s staff at every point of the design for feedback that helped us make rapid iterations. We worked to create simple visuals that communicated the complex media literacy approach that The LAMP employs.

Digital Strategy + A/B Testing

We identified that one of The LAMP’s most critical assets is the organization’s permission to communicate with supporters. With that goal in mind, we designed the site to maximize email signups. We also built custom landing pages to cater to different audience segments.

After launching the new site, we challenged our own designs by running A/B tests with the goals of driving even more email signups. Our data-informed decisions increased email registrations by 400%.

Original design
v1 original

Winning variation

v2 lesson plan

Digital Advertising

WW helped The LAMP maximize its monthly $10k Google AdWords grant to drive high quality traffic to the site. The team was then able to leverage this grant to bring in more teachers and classrooms to their media literacy programs.

Testimonial

“From start to finish, working with Whole Whale to redesign our website was a pleasure. Our old website was holding us back from reaching the people we most want to reach, but with the new site, we’re getting significantly more traffic and making more promising connections. Our supporters have commented on how much clearer our narrative is on the new site, and how much easier it is to access our digital resources. Whole Whale moved us forward into a data-driven design, and because they specialize with nonprofits, they understood the ways in which our needs and branding are so different from a more commercial business. We’re looking forward to working with them again soon, and I heartily recommend them to everyone I meet looking for solid nonprofit web development.”

Emily Long, Director of Communications and Development of The LAMP. (Nov 2014)