Designer: Elisha Procenti

The goal of a nonprofit is to help people in a specific group, but to do that, an organization must be able to reach its audience first. An attractive, informative, easy-to-navigate website is key, and Interfaith Worker Justice’s (IWJ) website wasn’t helping advance its mission: to build alliances between religious and labor organizations in order to improve the lives of low-wage workers through education and training about issues that affect them.

IWJ graphic designer Jana Winch says, “The current size [of the site] is limiting. It should adapt to fill larger computer screens. It’s starting to look a bit crowded, and while the photos are good, they take up too much valuable real estate. The structure is chaotic. Visitors don’t easily recognize all the work IWJ does.”

DG designer Elisha Procenti first turned her attention to cleaning up the look of the home page. She began by reorganizing the site into several pages so readers don’t have to scroll through so much information crammed into one small left-hand column.

“To pull users to the ‘Current Issues’ page, there would be a rotating feature on the home page where every 10 seconds a different current issue would be featured so that the user could click on it and explore what IWJ was involved in,” notes Procenti. “Most current browsers support this feature, and there are many great sites where you can go to find HTML code to create this feature if there is no on-site web developer available.”

The designer also points out a cascading style sheet (CSS) should be used on websites to ensure a consistent look across all platforms and browsers. “I noticed that the site currently has one, yet not all fonts and font sizes are included in it,” Procenti says. “A style sheet makes updating and revising a website a lot easier. Every aspect of the site can be controlled and updated in one place with CSS.”

1. Original website
Interfaith Worker Justice’s (IWJ) original website is crowded and has a number of items and links visitors have to scroll through.

2. Images
Because IWJ is a nonprofit organization, the designer chose images from micro-payment site StockXpert to save on cost—the largest files are only $10 each.

3. Font
Procenti used Verdana Regular—specifically designed to deal with the challenges of an onscreen display—to ensure easy readability for visitors.

4. Color
IWJ wanted burgundy to remain the dominant color. The designer maintained a traditional black type, and chose gray for headlines and navigation. She suggests using the burgundy to indicate visited links.

5. Redesign
Procenti simplified the site by moving several items from the home page onto pages of their own. She recommends using the center tile as a 10-second rotating feature for the various articles on current issues.

6. Navigation links
The designer changed the name of many of the main navigation links to make them more user-friendly, and to give visitors a better idea of what to expect on each page. Image 275462_ 65501693, StockXpert, www.stockxpert.com

7. Page links
Procenti would like to see internal page links changed from black to burgundy to help them stand out better. Currently, links become underlined when a user rolls over one with a mouse. But if visitors do not roll over a link, they may not realize there is a link there at all. Image 268942_62062987, StockXpert, www.stockxpert.com

8. Display
“Instead of relying on the browser and content to determine page size, it should be given by the designer and be a part of the cascading style sheet (CSS),” she explains. “Putting page width and height in the CSS ensures each page follows those guidelines.” Image 818930_ 36518584, StockXpert, www.stockxpert.com