NCI’s new site needed to not only serve as the face of the organization, but it also had to have a high level of functionality in order to serve as a central clearing house for clients seeking services, volunteers searching for service opportunities and donors needing a secure way to make charitable contributions to the organization. The site had to be turn-key, with staff members responsible for content updates including text and images, but the site had to still maintain a standard look and feel, regardless of who created a new page. And it had to be endlessly expandable in order to accommodate ongoing updates of NCI activities.

NCI’s basic nature is that of a mosaic – a complete, unified organization consisting of distinct agencies and community centers serving an incredibly diverse population. The new site had to not only reflect that mosaic, but react to it, giving each of those distinct agencies equal weight and NCI wanted to make sure users were able to connect with the services they were looking for.

The organization’s would-be content editors were not necessarily computer-savvy. After the site was completed, HexaGroup would conduct training sessions to educate the staff on how the new back-end worked and then would turn it over, with all update responsibilities assumed by the organization. Therefore, the content management system had to be easy to understand yet also robust in order to handle pushing a variety of content types to either existing pages or new pages, and every change had to look like it was part of a whole – the content editors were to be restricted to a particular set of styles.

Solid, well though-out information design was vital for the new site. Poor design would cut the hamstrings of the entire project – regardless of its functionality, if users couldn’t get to the information they needed, the exercise would be a wasted effort. A team consisting of both NCI staff and HexaGroup web professionals followed our process to develop a comprehensive site map which resulted in a clear road map for the development of the project.

A visual design set was then created. The final design incorporated art work by Sacha Mazarre, a NCI staff member. Her art gave the website a beautiful, individualized look and feel that suits the character of the organization to a “T,” giving NCI an updated, modern look.

An overall main page design was then created with color differentiation for each of NCI’s sub agencies. We also created a variety of 2-3 column layouts to serve as page styles. Next, we created an outline of all possible visual content styles and site features, such as call-out graphics and text, used to cross-reference data on the websites. These styles would be defined elements that could be used on pages by the different content editors once the site was live. The styles were implemented on Cascade Style Sheets (CSS).

The last piece of the puzzle was the implementation of e-commerce functionality which would handle both the volunteer registration and secure donations. HexaGroup has adapted the right e-commerce tools to meet similar needs of for-profit and non-profit organizations with similar goals. In order to keep the site economical, NCI chose not to pursue a recurring donor payment system, allowing us to adapt Website Payment Pro by PayPal Inc, the most economical and full-fledged gateway and internet merchant application.

The design of NCI’s site is well balanced, giving an overall impression of stability and permanence to the organization. It also has ample room for growth – that combined with the site’s incredible flexibility means that the site will meet NCI’s needs for years to come. Web maintenance is also simplified. NCI is happy – and HexaGroup has enjoyed a number of referrals from the project.