You’ve probably seen somewhere on our website we offer training for websites. You might wonder, what does a website built by a volunteer with some technical help from Breaking Even look like?
Well let’s start from the beginning and say it looked like this (note: This was screenshotted as the website was, and is showing at 500 pixels rather than the actual 600 wide it was. In other words, a very skinny website floating in the middle of my 20 inch desktop screen):
The site was built in 1995. Now I don’t know about you but a lot has changed for me since 1995, and a lot has changed in terms of website technology. First of all, screens have gotten both smaller (mobile) and wider (desktop monitors). It has also been made much easier to have dynamic elements, like slideshows and other interactive content. And also, people now expect more out of websites. They want to pay online, fill out a form, learn a lot of information about you before proceeding.
Kathy, a BHHS volunteer, wanted them to be able to easily have photo galleries, downloadable brochures, a slideshow, a blog, and other features she had seen on websites. She also wanted it to be something they could update themselves.
So over the course of several meetings, to allow Kathy to gather materials like photos and get approvals from the board at various stages, we built the following basic (though very useful) website for the Bar Harbor Historical Society.
Is it super fancy? No. Did we get all crazy on fonts or redesign their logo? Nope.
But the site is responsive and has the features they want. And it’s built in a platform that will be able to grow with them as they increase their membership and track their website visitors’ behavior over the course of the summer with Google Analytics.
Since it’s been online the last few weeks, they’ve gotten several inquiries from people visiting the area or searching for historical information.
As being part of the creation process, Kathy has a great idea not only of what went into the website but what it is capable of. She has already had some great ideas she is taking to the board. Most exciting is she was able to pinpoint the most important information that needed to be conveyed and we were able to find places for it on the homepage of the website, with still more room to add additional features.
Congratulations to Kathy for her hard work getting content together as well as the Bar Harbor Historical Society on a website that reaches not only a more modern user but saves volunteers time and effort in the process by answering those questions they were being asked over and over again.