Bard Prison Initiative: Website Redesign
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Coinciding with the organization’s 25th Anniversary, Flyleaf launched a newly designed website for BPI in the summer of 2024, with thorough consideration as to what content and features best told BPI’s inspiring story, highlighted their work and alumni, and galvanized support.
The main goal of the redesign was to raise awareness of BPI’s decades-long accomplishments & their leadership status in the field. While growing BPI’s audience and increasing engagement, we sought to make sure BPI’s brand and digital presence matched the high level of the work they do, now a quarter century into transforming lives.
SERVICES
- Responsive Web Design
- Browser-based CSS Animation & Video
- Digital Marketing Strategy Branding
Visit website
SERVICES
- Responsive Web Design
- Browser-based CSS Animation & Video
- Digital Marketing Strategy Branding
Engaging in the Journey of BPI
Facilitating in-depth discussions with the client, creating tools like Personas, and scrutinizing site analytics and other data points all helped us step back and examine who exactly is connecting with BPI’s mission and what content is resonating most. With that information, we implemented design strategies to reach new audiences and offer deeper understandings of BPI’s work. With a balance of top-notch candid and portrait photography and written content that speaks to BPI’s extraordinary challenges and accomplishments over 25 years, we were able to tell the story of BPI’s journey of becoming a national leader in the field of college-in-prison.
What we learned and how we synthesized it:
- Education of BPI’s core mission was central → Focus the homepage on a basic understanding of BPI’s services, then provide clear navigation to deeper learning.
- People searched for and interacted most with personal stories and articles about people behind BPI’s work. → Ensure alumni voices are featured prominently and staff are also given ample real estate, giving a real face to the mission and accomplishments of BPI.
- Major milestones and content continue to engage people. → Find opportunities to feature success stories like the Debate Union’s win against Harvard and the docuseries College Behind Bars and connect it to alumni updates and BPI’s ongoing work
- High performing pages on competitor sites are information rich pages for a mainstream audience, answering questions that people search for using accessible language. → Make sure we explain the policies that are behind BPI’s work.
Custom Landing Pages
Taking our learnings beyond the navigable pages on the website, we worked with the client to build pages optimized for those new to BPI, with focused content used as accessible entry points into the BPI world and clear calls to action.
Another Side of BPI: Microsites
BPI’s Microcollege and BardBaccalaureate programs step outside of prison to further their mission of making higher education accessible to underserved communities. With the redesign underway, we took the opportunity to better assess who the website is serving and how prospective students need to access information today. Looking to distill informational sections down to their essence, we reconstructed the styles and content of these sites in Fall of 2024, to coincide with BPI’s 25th Anniversary.
