INDUSTRY:
Non-Profit

SERVICES:
– Website Strategy, Design & Development

“GRIT Marketing Group has been a partner of YCL since 2016. In 2024, we were fortunate to have their expertise on our most recent website redesign. We knew that our new website needed the flexibility to meet the needs of our community and our ever-changing offerings. This project was a major undertaking, and the GRIT Marketing Group team rose to the challenge; they brought our vision and ideas to completion with creative solutions, responsive service, and exceptional project management. Our partnership with GRIT has grown and adapted with each new project, and we look forward to future collaborations for years to come.”

-Autumn Groff
Assistant Director of Digital Services & Marketing, York County Libraries

Strategic Discovery to Guide Site Strategy Planning

Though the relationship between GRIT and YCL was longstanding, the team did not take anything for granted when it came to truly understanding the goals for the site. Site design and development was grounded in strategic discovery that included interviews with key stakeholders and departments responsible for various aspects of YCL service delivery. The insights gained during these sessions informed definition of the diverse audiences to be served by the site and alignment of the key aspects of the YCL brand and experiences that fit each.

Building Intuitive User Experiences with Audience Customizations

With the foundations firmly in place, GRIT supported the YCL team through all phases of site planning, design, development and launch, ensuring alignment with critical functionality and user experience goals such as:

• A custom menu experience designed to balance one-click access to key calls to action with seamless delivery to the depth of resources and information available across the site.
• Custom audience portals with dynamic customized feeds from the programs section, calendar, blog, catalog and more.
• An intuitive “Find My Library” experience with an interactive map and dynamic hours feature.
• Customized pages for each individual library location with dynamic event feeds.
• A strategic integration of organization programming that allows site visitors to filter from the full list to find those that are the best fit for their individual needs and interests.
• Seamless integration of a variety of third-party resources, including the organization’s new event solution, catalog, library account portal and more.
• A giving section with on-site donation options for one-time and recurring gifts, designated donations, and more as well as an online store for selling YCL merchandise.
• An intuitive search that enables visibility across the site as well as the third-party catalog and event tools.
• On-site e-commerce capabilities.
• Deeply integrated and personalized calls to action designed to inspire next steps in connection based on where users are in their online experience.
• Foundational search engine optimization to ensure members of the community searching for programs and services the library offers can readily connect to the site.

A Robust & Intuitive Admin Experience

A critical element of project success was building a WordPress-based site with a customized admin portal that would allow YCL to not just readily manage and update site content, but to create diverse new content and pages over time as site needs evolved. The site includes a variety of core page layouts that offer an expansive library of layout options. The YCL team has a high degree of flexibility to add content, images and video in varied layout styles, with and without branded backgrounds and in flexible number and order options to craft visually interesting pages that deliver a strong user experience on desktop and mobile.