The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is the sole conservation organization working to protect birds and their habitats throughout the western hemisphere. Over its 30 year history, ABC has built an impressive track record through global partnerships and focused conservation work, but its website had never reflected that collaborative mission or the scale of its impact. As part of an agency team, I helped rebuild the site's underlying UX strategy to better represent ABC's work and build trust with donors.
client
American Bird Conservancy
year
2023
timeframe
3 Months
UX Srategy
Non-Profit
Website
Problem statement
ABC's website was outdated, and its information architecture had become disorganized over time, making it difficult for visitors to navigate or understand the organization's impact. The site also failed to represent ABC's aspirations as a conservation leader, undermining the trust needed to encourage donor giving.
Solution
I lead a full site discovery phase, which included stakeholder interviews, an analytics review, a competitive review, and a heuristic evaluation of the current site. This gave the team a clear, evidence based understanding of where the existing experience was falling short and what ABC needed the new site to accomplish. A key insight from discovery was a gap between donor expectations and reality: many donors assumed they were funding direct bird rescue or care, when in fact their dollars were driving habitat conservation, the actual mechanism behind ABC's impact. To bridge that gap, I applied Construal Level Theory to shape the site's messaging and visual strategy, starting with birds, the tangible, emotional subject donors already loved, then guiding them toward the habitats those birds depend on, where their donations actually make a difference. From there, I developed the content strategy, user flows, and wireframes for the new site, which were handed off to the design and development teams for build out. As part of this work, I also: * Created a taxonomy system for the site's Bird Library, working directly with developers to implement the structure within the CMS * Owned quarterly analytics dashboard reviews after launch, using user behavior data to identify opportunities for ongoing improvement Together with the broader team's work on visual design, animation, and messaging, this strategy helped create a site that clearly connected habitat conservation to bird conservation, while building the credibility needed to earn donor trust.
Impact
Following the site relaunch, ABC saw a 30 percent year over year increase in donations. This reflects the results of the full rebrand, including visual design, content, and UX strategy working together, and points to a more trustworthy, engaging experience for donors.