Hooked on Fishing

January 2023 - May 2023

A team consisting of myself and five others created a brand new website design and layout for Hooked on Fishing that better explains the benefits of the services they offer and the importance of community involvement.

The Client

The client that we worked with was Hooked on Fishing, a local, non-profit fishing park that provides fishing opportunities for the Peoria community. Since 2008, the park has been a great place for children, senior citizens, veterans, and special needs groups to experience the joys of fishing. They supply all of the fishing rods and bait so that anyone can give fishing a try. They also have staff members and volunteers on hand to offer assistance to any participants in need.

The Challenge

The main problem that the client was looking to be solved was the lack of user engagement with the current website. While booking was typically done through the site, other engagements had been low. Donations, volunteer applications, and sponsorship deals had typically been conducted through personal interactions and searches by the staff. This process, while more personal, had put a large strain on the small staff of Hooked on Fishing. The new website would need to be designed in a way that could circumvent this problem. We decided that these actions would need to be emphasized and simplified so that, in theory, more users would engage in them through their website. That posed a new challenge to us as a team: how do we appeal to each of the target users in a cohesive manner? Potential donors, volunteers, and sponsors each have different actions we wish for them to take, so we needed to find a way to appeal to them all.

The Solution

The Content

We started with working on creating new content for the website that would do a better job of hooking the target users than the current site. The homepage, under the Story Brand model, had its content updated to hone in on getting new donors, volunteers, and sponsors. The content is now focused on the importance that these things have to the client, in order to show that their actions do have effects. It specifically mentions how the target users can make a difference, each having their own dedicated sections. The new content also puts more emphasis on the people that Hooked on Fishing helps and how they help them. If one donates, volunteers, or sponsors, they, in turn, will also be helping these people out and getting the satisfaction that comes with it. The homepage now has many call to action buttons so any users who are influenced to act by the content can easily do so.

The Visuals

The next changes we made to the website were improving the visuals of the website to hopefully attract more users. We decided to keep the off-white and black of their current website in place while adding two new colors. These colors ended up being a dark blue as a secondary color and an orange as a tertiary color. These colors combine with the old colors to make the website pop much more than it did before. We chose simplistic fonts for the headers and body text so everything would be easily readable. The new colors and fonts came together in a new look for the website that is both stylish and functional.

The Structure

We then determined how we would restructure the website in a way that boosts user engagement. We discussed what the most important information for the users would be in order to determine what the main pages for the website should be. The main pages ended up being Home, Booking, Get Involved, Events, Community, Contact Us, and Donate. We decided upon this structure so that all of the target users are only a few clicks away from completing their goals. In particular, the get involved page gives access to the donation, volunteer, and sponsorship forms, making taking these actions much easier. The forms themselves have also been streamlined and standardized. The homepage received the greatest change in its layout, as we based it mostly off of the model in Donald Miller’s “Building a Story Brand”. This model made the homepage tell a story that will hopefully compel the users to take action.

The Results

All of the work that we put into this project culminated in a complete revitalization of the Hooked on Fishing website. The newly added colors, fonts, and images have brought a great amount of new life to the website. The restructuring of the website has made the process of taking action far easier than before. The new content is now pointed towards the target users to explain why they are needed, who they can help, and how it helps. The Story Brand model has laid the content out in a way that will be more convincing to the users. These things all lead to a website that is sure to be more attractive to and drive more action from potential donors, volunteers, and sponsors. The client has been consistently impressed with the work that the team has done and believes that our solution will be able to solve their issue. It should allow them to move forward with more people willing to help them out and less strain on their backs.

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