A New Site That´s Easy to Manage and Upholds Design Integrity

The YMCA of Greater Dayton is a charitable organization with an inclusive environment driven to enrich the quality of family, spiritual, social, mental and physical well being for all. 

The organization wanted a site that was easy to edit, would allow content creators a granular level control over the appearance of each page, while still preserving design integrity. 

The YMCA of Greater Dayton team is happy with their new, beautiful, responsive website. The new design is modern and customizable, and contributes to a far more streamlined site structure. A vastly improved user experience and user journey has led to a dramatic increase in conversions, and has helped the YMCA of Greater Dayton better serve its community. 

At a glance

The YMCA of Greater Dayton was having difficulty leveraging its digital platform to serve its community. Their existing site was difficult to edit and maintain for YMCA staff, who struggled with changing and updating pages as needed. 

The complexity of the many group and program offerings meant that specific information (such as group exercise schedules) could be nearly impossible for visitors to find. A large number (over 63%) of their visitors were coming to the old site on their mobile devices. Unfortunately, the entire site was not laid out responsively, making it difficult to use on a smartphone. The eCommerce experience was difficult to navigate on both smartphones and desktop computers, which was affecting the YMCA of Dayton’s conversion goals. 

We adapted the Open Y distribution to add component based atomic design functionality. As part of the content and design work, we created numerous page templates with adjustable components. Our team began with wireframes and mockups and worked with the Dayton team to construct a solid content strategy that would inform the layout and display of information on the site. 

Because the new site’s structure was simplified to offer a better user experience, and because the content had been structured in a completely new way, our team and the YMCA of Greater Dayton worked together to migrate the content from the old site. All old content was mapped to the new site and aligned to the Open Y structure. As part of this project, we also trained the YMCA of Greater Dayton staff and provided thorough documentation to help them make the very most of their new site. 

The end result was a flexible, adjustable design that would allow content creators to move items around on each page, update individual blocks and components, spin up new landing pages, and edit content painlessly. 

Lastly, the shopping experience was overhauled so that users could more easily purchase memberships and lessons online. We streamlined the shopping experience with Daxko, so that customers can easily make selections and check-out on the YMCA of Greater Dayton site, no matter which device they’re using.