Connecting with Community

Since the Community Learning Center (CLC) opened in Kendallville a few years ago, I have enjoyed opportunities to be a programmer, collaborator, and champion of their work, thanks to the various "hats I have worn" during that time.

The CLC has grown and matured, thanks to the unified efforts of the board, staff, and many dedicated programmers and supported partners connecting the community. As a witness to their journey, and because I have been a service provider to some of those programmers and partners, I have to assume the CLC's decision to work with Catchy Creations LLC for a website refresh was an easy one.

The home page on the WordPress site needed a refresh. It was replaced by a new Wix Studio design.

The CLC had a few specific goals in mind with the new website launch:

• Rid the (WordPress) site of some bugs.

• Keep the site simple and clean.

• Maintain the same navigation where possible, so as not to confuse frequent site users.

• Make it easy for staff to make content updates in-house.

• Feature the AM Strauss Theatre, and other in-house venues.

• Create spaces to add additional content to expand the usefulness of the site.

• Automate communication tools.

With objectives in mind, I began from scratch to create a new layout in Wix Studio, an editor that allows full control over responsiveness to ensure sites work well on any device and screen size. The first step was to duplicate the existing site navigation (menu) to ensure the original links would not change. The old site had some layout challenges that I also addressed with a more uniform layout throughout. A few pops of animation added a litte more interest, too.

The new CLC home page.

As I built out the site, knowledge of my client's work was tremendously helpful to determine which elements needed to be incorporated into Wix's Content Management System (CMS), a database that allows clients to fully control text, images, links, and more without risking changes to design. The CLC's new site has 21 different data "collections" that the staff at the CLC can maintain as simply as they would enter data into a spreadsheet. This means that as changes in staff, board members, rental spaces, programmers, hours, rate sheets, and more come about, content can be updated without paying a designer to make a change.

Screenshot of CMS, where CLC staff can maintain spaces available for rent.

Wix is a robust development platform that also provides many integrations with other tech that are commonly used, including Constant Contact. By using the integration tools, the CLC's new "Subscribe" form automatically updates their Constant Contact database to ensure new subscribers will receive intended e-Newsletters. We also added an automation to ensure they receive notifications of any new blog posts published.

The blog, as well as expanded descriptions of dedicated partners, a Contact Us form, and other new elements set the CLC up to build their audience and stay connected going forward. They even took advantage of a new domain, amstrausstheatre.com, connected to their new site to help grow the audience for live performances in their historic auditorium.

New AM Strauss landing page doubles as a venue for rent and a space for the CLC's performing arts committee's programs. These and other landing pages were significantly expanded in the new design.

The new CLC website is also made to better serve those with accessibility challenges. A free version of the UserWay widget was added and the site was audited to help meet accessibility design standards. This means making sure images have alternative text, colors and contrasts are appropriate, headers are in order for navigating by "Tab" and more. The widget can also be enabled or disabled on the site.

of UserWay widget, when activated, opens a side panel menu to help those with disabilities more easily interact with the site.

It became apparent very quickly how important engagement is for the community that uses the CLC. Within the first week of launch, 19 new users subscribed to receive e-Newsletters! The CLC is a wonderful community asset that serves all ages and abilities, making it a personal joy to be a part of. From start to finish, this site launch took only about three weeks.

Community Learning Center

Bringing Hidden Ego Events out of hiding

Doug Ebey is one of Noble County's busiest entrepreneurs. Ebey's first business was the launch of Hidden Ego Gym in Albion in 2015. Two years later, Ebey opened Hidden Ego Volleyball, an outdoor sand volleyball recreation center and bar, in Kendallville.

Fast forward to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic when, in 2020, Ebey's desire to keep people active resulted in his use of a vacant space in a Kendallville strip mall to host an indoor corn hole league. That sport later moved out to his outdoor recreation venue, which he now calls Hidden Ego Event and Recreation Facility. The venue is much more, however, featuring lighted sand volleyball courts, pavilion bar (full service), restrooms, and often live music and food trucks.

Maybe in an effort to make sure boredom is never an option, Ebey also remodeled that indoor former corn hole space and opened his second Hidden Ego Gym there, right next door to the bowling alley he and a partner also purchased, upgraded, and renamed as K-Vegas Bowl.

Catchy Creations' latest project was the launch of one of three websites we designed for Ebey's businesses, this one for Hidden Ego Event and Recreation Facility. (Previously, Catchy Creations also designed new websites for Hidden Ego Gyms and K Vegas Bowl.)

For the event center, we once again opted to use the Wix platform, because the need was for a simple "brochure site", not a lot of bells and whistles. The audience is primarily those looking for a local event venue - and Hidden Ego has just the place for their summertime gatherings!

This project tapped into basic marketing skills, requiring that we make sure all of the "who, what, why, when, and how" questions a visitor may have were adequately answered within the pages. All the basics are covered - what services are available, who they are for, where to find them, when they are offered, and how to take part.

From a design standpoint, we opted for the blue and green color scheme to evoke the great outdoors. Some fun scrolling effects were also used, along with shadowed text headers both to enhance visibility, but also to add a little depth.

Ebey is one of those clients who is less interested in "how it looks" than "it's out there to find." He occasionally sends updates to hours or prices, but is otherwise seemingly satisfied knowing he can count on Catchy Creations to keep his digital presence out there, up to date, and looking professional.

Hidden Ego Events

Creating an interactive experience for tourists in Noble

The opportunity to design and launch a new website for the Noble County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) was an honor, and a job that comes after years of personal passion for the work the CVB does.

I have the pleasure of working on a nearly daily basis, at my "day job", with the CVB, branded as "Visit Noble County". Our teams share an office because both organizations have a shared mission to ensure a thriving local economy.

After providing support for the past two years, maintaining and enhancing the CVB's existing website and providing editing support to publish monthly blog posts, I was asked to submit a proposal for a full website relaunch.

The "old site" was lacking some of the functionality Visit Noble County wanted to see - and making the edits required would have been more difficult, and costly, than starting anew.

"Before" screen shot of home page

Though WordPress is an incredible and versatile platform on which to build a website, making even simple text or image edits can be really challenging for a non-technical user. Heck, in my experience (and I'm always up for a technical challenge), every WordPress-based website is unique and presents a learning curve to navigate editing and maintenance. This is not an ideal situation for an organization without a budget dedicated to that kind of work.

The project began with a meeting of the staff at Visit Noble County, at which we created a wish list of features, and their vision came into focus. From there, I offered three different base designs to get the right "look and feel" before beginning to build the new site:

1. Option A offered a full-width, responsive style with little white space. This style is bold, graphic, and image driven.

2. Option B offered a mix of elements - some stretching the full width of any screen, but with more white space. This design can offer a nice mix that provides room for great graphic emphasis but a break for the eyes, along the way.

3. Option C offered a centered, traditional design with large blank panels on either side of the content. The benefit of this type of design is that no matter how wide the user's screen is, the content will not shift or morph. The downside is it can be a bit boring.

All three design options are "responsive", meaning all can be viewed on a mobile device with ease and no loss of functionality. I wasn't surprised when Option B was chosen.

A tourism website is chocked full of data. Tourism partner contact details, lots of images, and current events that change all the time. Physical assets come and go, partners come into and go out of business, etc. This is why we were all pretty excited about the opportunity to build a "back end" that allows administrative staff at Visit Noble County an easy way to maintain data.

"Before" accommodations page with features subject to frequent change.

Visit Noble County's new site was built on the Wix platform. I suggested Wix because of the ease of (creating and) updating any number of databases to help make data entry (content additions) goof-proof and editing easy. Wix's Dynamic Data features enable an organization to update content on pages without risking changes to design. This is a huge benefit to many smaller organizations that lack onstaff technical expertise.

"After", the new site provides several databases that drive content. This screenshot is from the "back end" of the new site and is not visible to website visitors.

A sample view of Visit Noble County's database of "partners". This is how staff maintain much of the new website's content.

Using the databases (tables) and Dynamic Data connectors, the content visitors see on the new Visit Noble County website is interactive, meaning users (on some pages) have the option to narrow their search by a variety of different choices. Visitors will see options to look for things to do, places to eat (and drink), and places to stay by location, amenities, and even based on Visit Noble County's recommendations for different audiences (solo traveler, couples, friends groups, and even dog-friendly points of interest.)

In order to facilitate the significant enhancements in site engagement and use, Catchy Creations provided Visit Noble County with data templates created in Excel, making it easier for the client to choose, edit, and otherwise prepare the data they wanted to see on the new site.

"After" home page, with fun, animated dog highlighting the option to search tourism assets by "audience".

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a8201e_06974ac735df4b1e8b5494aa8220fa21/240p/mp4/file.mp4

Pages on the new Visit Noble County site are easy to navigate, linking from one to another, enabling exploration as the visitor's mind switches gears. Each featured asset has a landing page with contact information and more, including (in most cases) a link to the partner's own website or landing page.

"After" sample page with filter to narrow search of Sports & Recreation assets.

Filtered results shown on new website, with buttons to link to partner landing page.

New partner landing pages provide a cross-reference to nearby attractions, content made possible by Dynamic Data connectors. Visitors can continue on to the partner's website for even more relevant information.

Going forward, the Visit Noble County staff has much more control over the critical content of their website, with immediate access (no need to await the response of a technical consultant). When design elements need an update, the organization can reach out to Catchy Creations for low-cost maintenance.

The timeline (about 13 weeks from start to finish, over the holidays):

• First meeting: October 10, 2022

• Proposal submitted: October 20

• Proposal accepted: October 24

• Website design phase: October 24 - November 22

• Meeting to review first draft of design: November 22

• Meeting to review second draft of design: January 4

• CVB prep of database content: October 24, 2022 - January 15, 2023

• Import of database content: January 15

• Designs finalized and tested: January 15-25

• Live launch: January 27

It was a pleasure to work with the CVB team promoting the extraordinary tourism assets in Noble County. Contact me about helping your organization enhance its digital experience for your patrons!

Visit Noble County