Heard Museum

Dedicated to bringing nature and people together.

The Challenge

Heard Museum needed to outsource web design after years of continuous development and expansion. Their continual addition of educational programs and resources eventually cluttered navigation and led to broken pages. Free education deliverables, ticketing, memberships, and donations were not easily accessible, decreasing click-through rates and increasing bounce rates. In addition to functional challenges, their website messaging and imagery had become outdated and no longer matched the rich presence true to their identity. Therefore, our goal was to deliver a site that visitors could intuitively access, improving the organization of ticketing, memberships, donations, and payment renewal pages.

Captured the complexity of displaying all of our offerings in a more cohesive and organized manner. Internal teammates have been pleased with the site improvements and we have a massive influx of people contacting us.

Brand Discovery

With its unmanicured trails, gardens, pond, and wildlife, Heard offers a unique nature experience that’s hard to come by in the surrounding urban area. I drew on this aspect of the brand to use a color palette, fonts, and imagery that bridged the physical experience with their digital presence. At the foundation of their new color palette is the green featured in their existing logo with some earth tones that complement the green and provide a natural, warm and welcoming style. Organic elements emphasized the experience encountered by visitors of the Heard Museum.

Web Stategy

During the early phases of the project, Heard Museum’s goals were oriented towards producing an intuitive, family-friendly, and nature-inspired website. Heard Museum strategized to improve user experience and update visual branding on the new website. Once aesthetic and functional goals were defined, I began testing user journeys, restructuring site navigation, and updating messaging. After conducting a thorough analysis on how users were utilizing the website and identifying pain points, the site structure was reprioritized. The intent was to make it easier for a user to find primary information while still easily accessing more detailed information such as events, programs, etc.

Web Design

Organic elements emphasized the experience encountered by visitors of the Heard Museum. To emphasize this, the design uses a colors, fonts, and imagery that are intending to enforce the organic plant feel, the design uses typography that features smooth leaf-like serifs and soft curves. Likewise, imagery, illustrations, and patterns featured plants native to Texas, pairing combined elements to reflect a strong sense of warmth and wilderness. Functionally, a key priority was reorganizing the site layout so users could access the tickets page with one click. The objective of revising site navigation was to reduce overall clicks before the user reaches the desired destination.

Development

A request made by the client early on was to maintain their ability to edit the site easily. WordPress as the CMS and Elementor ensured that any future edits to the website could be made with ease. WuFoo forms was also integrated on their site since they were already familiar with the service, and had collected various data throughout the years.

"Captured the complexity of displaying all of our offerings in a more cohesive and organized manner. Internal teammates have been pleased with the site improvements and we have a massive influx of people contacting us".

The Result

The new website managed to capture the complexity of displaying all of their offerings in a more cohesive and organized manner, and there are tangible results. Bounce rates are down, people are staying on the site longer, they have more sessions, and more people are finding them through organic search. Moreover, conversions have also increased together with their sales. Internal teammates have been pleased with the site improvements, especially now that that have a massive influx of people contacting them.
Increase in Organic Traffic
0 %
Increase to the Tickets Page
0 %
Increase to Membership Page
0 %