A redesigned website becomes a tool for NSLS to tell its brand story and connect with young people around the country.
NSLS needed a user-friendly CMS so internal stakeholders could update site content at a moment’s notice.
NSLS needed its content to be organized around each unique target audience and their respective needs, questions, and motivations.
The new website needed to make finding a NSLS chapter possible, regardless of where the prospect was located.
Since its inception, the National Society of Leadership and Success has aimed to support dreamers, creating a better world in the process. They do this by providing college students with a place to learn leadership skills, develop the tools they need to be successful, and acquire the skills to prepare for their future.
NSLS had an outdated website, built on a platform not designed for easy, in-house updates meaning the staff could not easily add, edit, or remove content. Additionally, although the website featured a vast amount of content, the content struggled to rank organically and wasn’t organized into a clear user journey.
It was crucial to NSLS that its website make a strong impression on two audiences: students invited to join and university administrators seeking to host a chapter on their campus. These two audiences represented different generations, which meant they sought different kinds of information. The old website did not clearly target either.
The Spinutech (formerly Bayshore Solutions) team spent extensive time getting to know the founder of NSLS and his team, and to understand the organization’s mission and purpose. Through its unique website roadmapping process, Spinutech was able to uncover the NSLS story to better share it in a way that gave legitimacy to the organization and spoke directly to the NSLS target audiences. It was also in these sessions that a new target audience, parents of prospective members, was identified which led to a completely new section of the website being developed.
The NSLS marketing team joins virtually, and in-person in North Carolina for their website roadmap session.
Spinutech’s VP of Web Solutions, Maggie Moss, explains the roadmapping card exercise and what each color represents on the walls.
Content Strategist, Meghan McAtasney, takes notes as NSLS walks through the purpose and goals of their new website project.
NSLS founder, Gary Tuerack, listens as his team collaborates on major areas of project scope.
NSLS stakeholders stayed engaged throughout the roadmapping session.
Additionally, a feature lacking from the old website was the ability to search for an NSLS chapter. The Spinutech team built an interactive “Find a Chapter” functionality where visitors can search by school or location, or select a school from an embedded Google map.
The whole NSLS team got certified in HubSpot and enthusiastically embraced the platform as the CMS for the new website. Still, they wanted proof that the new one would outperform the old one. They A/B split tested the two websites by randomly directing 15% of traffic to the new one. Within days, they could see the new website was exceeding their projected metrics and choose to switch over fully.
“The Spinutech team was a pleasure to work with from start to finish. They were extremely thorough in their development of the site--receptive to feedback, flexible with our changing needs, and the driving force behind pushing NSLS forward. Once we had a chance to test the finished site, the results spoke for themselves.”Mike Phelps, Assistant Director of Marketing, NSLS