Education / Non-Profit Website Design Case Study

Project Overview

The Ramapo Athletic Boosters Association is a non-profit organization with a mission of enhancing the high school experience for all people in their local community by supporting the Athletic Programs at Ramapo High School in Franklin Lakes, NJ. This volunteer-led organization believes that athletics has a vital role to play in developing well-rounded individuals (we agree).

To support the athletics programs at the high school, the organization offers a yearly membership program that provides several benefits to members. The revenue generated from this membership program goes towards funding new construction projects that benefit all teams and provides financial support for athletic services & events at the school.

Project Type

eCommerce Website Build

Industry

Education / Non-Profit

Client

The Ramapo Athletic Boosters Association

What We Did

Custom Website Design

The
Challenge

When the organization first approached us about helping them build a new website, they had little online presence to speak of. Their website was an unfinished Google site that was not helping to advance the organization's mission at all. While their membership program was popular within the community, the process to sign up was completely offline and much more complicated for both applicants and volunteers than it needed to be. The organization was also the leading supplier of athletic apparel for the community but was limited to selling its inventory at events since its website did not have any e-commerce functionality.

Our
Strategy

While there was a lot of work to do, we were excited to help this non-profit advance its mission since we had received benefits from playing sports during our academic years. Our team took the time to learn about the organization's key areas of support and how a new website could streamline its operations. Using WordPress and the Oxygen Builder, we designed a sleek website that matches the school's branding while achieving a unique look for the organization that allows them to stand out as a separate entity. We then dug into the technical work to set up a complete e-commerce store and online payment processing system so people could easily purchase their membership and apparel online.

Modern Web Design

Impactful Web Design For an Organization On a Mission

To make it clear that our client provides an excellent service to the community, we knew the site had to feature incredible design. The organization was part of a large school system, so we needed to stick to predetermined branding guidelines, giving us less flexibility than a typical project.

Proving that our team can adapt to any design challenge, we paired their existing green color against a new light yellow background used in most areas of the site instead of plain white. This soft contrast creates a warm feeling throughout the website that communicates trust while also helping the website to differentiate itself from the primary school website.

eCommerce Functionality

Building a Digital Store From The Ground Up

We love building e-commerce websites. They provide a unique challenge and allow our team to creatively leverage the website to drive more sales.

In this situation, our client had never sold any products online, so they needed help setting up a brand new eComm shop. Using WordPress and WooCommerce, we created a fully-functional eCommerce website that provides visitors with a great online shopping experience.

Parents, students, and staff can now easily buy school apparel whenever they like, and managing inventory has become significantly easier on the organization's volunteers.

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Online Membership Purchase

Making Signing Up for a Membership Simple

The main perk of the organization's yearly membership program is access to an exclusive, members-only app that is a one-stop resource for all things sports at Ramapo High School. While the organization did have a healthy number of sign-ups, many felt that they could reach even more families with a better online setup. Further, the process of signing up offline was overly complex for both potential members & the volunteers to manage later on.

Our team created a simple online payment form that lets people sign up on the website to solve these issues. We then integrated this system into Stripe for accounting purposes and a custom spreadsheet that helps the organization easily manage its memberships.

A Community Blog & Team Center

Dedicated Pages Featuring The Latest Athletics Updates

Our goal with this new website wasn't to just create a functional platform where people would buy memberships & apparel. Instead, we set out to create a fantastic website that would be a great resource to the local community. This way, people could regularly visit the site to get updates on the athletics programs at the high school.

To accomplish this, we designed a dedicated Teams page that featured the latest news on each team along with up-to-date schedules. We then created a blog that highlighted various student-athletes and noteworthy events.

Website Hosting & Training Videos

Digital Training & Support For Long Term Success

Before completing the project, we wanted to ensure the organization could leverage the website to achieve its goals for years to come. We never want to see our client's website slowly degrade if they cannot properly manage and maintain it.

To ensure this doesn't happen, we provide hosting & other website management solutions to ensure the site stays up-to-date and functional. We also created custom website training videos to show our clients how to manage the online store, membership system, and make essential updates. These training tools have let them continue to leverage their website as a marketing machine, and the result is that they now have a higher percentage of sign-ups than ever before.

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The End Result

Our client was extremely happy with the design of the website and the enhanced functionality we implemented that makes purchasing memberships & ordering products super simple. Not only has it made it easier for members of the school community to make purchases online, but it has dramatically streamlined the backend processing of orders so volunteers have much less admin work to do. Shortly after the website went live, our client informed us that they had reached a new record for membership sign ups. This proves how the new website we designed & developed was extremely effective in helping the organization achieve its mission. Now, they have more revenue to re-invest back into the athletic programs to support the local community at Ramapo High School.

Don’t Take Our Word For It - Just See What Our Client Had TO Say

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"The ideal company to help us develop a new website from scratch”

“Inbound took the time to truly understand our needs, requirements and organizational structure to ensure they delivered a high quality final product. We were new to the website development process and Inbound not only exceeded our expectations throughout development, but trained us during and after the project so that now we can manage our website and continue to sustain its relevance. I highly recommend Inbound Web Development for all of your web development needs!”

Derek M.

Ramapo Athletic Boosters Organization

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