Content Strategy Report for Math Adventure Jimmy Nguyen | Content Strategy | March 12, 2016

Table of Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................2 Research Highlights ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Comparative Analysis …………………………………………………..………………………………………………………3 Content Audit ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7 Final Recommendations .............................................................................................................................. 9

Executive Summary This report contains research observations and recommendations for remodeling the Math Adventure website that will help with clarify messaging across channels to educate potential customers and users, as well as reducing high-touch communication. To support the central goals of Math Adventure, it would be most beneficial to serve your current audience with a clear, actionable content on your website, and expanding your audience reach with a findable, relevant content. Our user research focused on two core audiences: educators and parents. The recommendations in this report aims to increase the amount of Math Adventure participants and supporters to help the program expand to other schools. After conducting a competitive audit to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Math Adventure in comparison to similar programs, as well as a qualitative content audit to evaluate the current content elements and information assets, the following recommendations are proposed: • • • • •

Add text content to the homepage Revamp the blog content Create a page for volunteers Consolidate four pages into two Remove the FAQ page

The homepage is currently ineffective at explaining what Math Adventure is due to the lack of text. While pictures are a great addition to any website, they should be the supporting content, not the primary. It is recommended to add a sub-headline to supplement the current headline, which should be a specific explanation of what Math Adventure can do, for whom, and why it is useful. With the headline, sub-headline, and three additional key points such as benefits and features, it will result in a value proposition that will give visitors a clear idea of what Math Adventure is. Lastly, incorporating calls-to-action is crucial to the homepage because it avoids dead ends by creating forward paths. The current blog posts do not have enough content in them, making them ineffective at engaging visitors. Each blog post should have at least 400 words, and there should be a larger variety of blog posts, such as volunteer interviews, stories of how donations and volunteers are having an impact, and stories of Math Adventure events. Volunteers are a huge asset for nonprofits, yet the only information about volunteers is hidden in the FAQ. Creating a page dedicated to volunteers, and adding that page to the top navigation bar, will make volunteer information easily accessible, and will play a huge role in converting the audience into supporters. The About Us & What is Math Adventure pages, as well as the Hosting Details and Benefits of Hosting pages, can be combined into two. By consolidating these pages, it allows room for new content if needed, and it is more efficient in providing information to the audience. After implementing the recommendations in this report, as well as other recommendations from the class, the FAQ will be filled with duplicated content that can easily be found throughout the website, making it unnecessary and safe to remove.

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Introduction This report contains research observations and recommendations for the remodeling of the Math Adventure website. We thank you for the opportunity to study your program and are excited to share our results with you. For this project, we began with two central business goals: • •

Increasing the amount and type of Math Adventure events. Creating a do-it-yourself program for out-of-area schools.

To support these goals, we saw that both serving your current audiences with a clear, actionable content on your website and expanding your audience reach with a findable, relevant content would bring the most benefit at this time. Our user research focused on two core audiences and their key tasks. • •

Educators/parent leaders who can sign up and host an event. Parents who may register, attend, volunteer, donate, sign up for your newsletter, read your blog, follow/interact with you on social media.

Both audiences need to easily understand Math Adventure and accomplish their primary goals very quickly. In the future, we recommend a more robust marketing plan to establish what content to add, but at this time, we believe focusing on your current core audiences tasks and needs on your current site is of primary importance. This particular report identifies the following project objective to drive research and recommendations: •

Clarify messaging across channels, starting with website, to educate potential customers and users and reduce high-touch communication.

To create the recommendations, a competitive analysis, technical content inventory, and qualitative content audit were conducted. The following sections outline results from the research and final recommendations for your website. The goal of these recommendations is to help convert your audience into participants of Math Adventure events, and then ultimately into supporters to help you grow to other schools.

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Research Highlights COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS A comparative analysis was done to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Math Adventure in comparison to Zeno Math, My Eye Level Bellevue, Girls Rock Math, and Launch Math, which are similar nonprofit math programs. Each organization was given a score of -1, 0, or 1 on 15 different heuristics relating to clarify messaging, functional website, and findability, resulting in a maximum score of 15. A score of -1 was given if the heuristic was not fulfilled, or fulfilled extremely poorly. A score of 0 was given if the heuristic was met moderately. Finally, a score of 1 was given if the heuristic was fulfilled well. Overall, Math Adventure ranked 4 out of 5 with a score of 3.

Figure 1. The scorecard used to evaluate Math Adventure and the comparators.

The navigation and presentation of the Math Adventure website is not terrible overall, but it holds little value to visitors who are trying to learn more about the program. Not every page has immediate relevance to the appropriate audience, and the calls-to-action are weak in some pages. There are some navigation expectations that can be improved, such as the Schedule link in the navigation bar. Instead of being a page where events are listed, the Schedule page is a sort of landing page for the registration page, hosting benefits, and hosting details. The main differentiator that separates Math Adventure from the other four programs is the theater aspect. The other programs aim to make math fun through the use of games, but Math Adventure uses both puzzles and role-play to get kids engaged. Math Adventure does a great job at showing this through the use of visuals. The other differentiators that Math Adventure has are videos of actual events, and the blog. Out of all the comparators, Girls Rock Math was the only program that has a video on their website. Instead of focusing on events, Girl’s Rock Math uses a video to portray their value proposition to their audience on the homepage. As for the blog, Zeno Math is the only comparator which implements one, and the content of that blog is very effective at engaging their visitors.

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Figure 2. The homepage of Zeno Math. Above the fold, there is a primary call-to-action that leads visitors to the About page. Below the fold, there are two groups of secondary calls-to-action that leads to other parts of the website.

The top scoring website is Zeno Math. The colors and meaningful pictures to support the text results in a great presentation. Every page holds strong values for the audience due to the content and effective calls-to-action. For example, the Zeno homepage creates their value propositions through the use of text and images, and their calls-to-action leads to their programs, events, and donation pages. There are also appropriate SEO elements such as headings and consistent title tags, making the website easily findable through Google. They also have a page dedicated to volunteers, where they list upcoming events and explain the impact that volunteers have on their participants. Lastly, the blog is filled with relevant and substantial content to help get their visitors engaged in the organization. The one advantage that Math Adventure, and every other comparator, has over Zeno Math is load time for web pages. The load time for Zeno webpages is consistently over 3 seconds, while pages on the Math Adventure website takes less than a second. Having quick load times is an important aspect for a great user experience. My three key recommendation as a result of this comparative audit are: • • •

Add text content to the homepage Revamp the blog content Add a page for volunteers

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Homepage Text Content The homepage is one of the most important pages on a website because it creates the first impression. Since it commonly gets the bulk of the traffic, it is crucial for the homepage to help convert as much of that traffic as possible. The primary content of the homepage is right now are images. However, images should be the supporting content, not the primary. Images by themselves do not hold much value to an audience who does not know what Math Adventure is. By adding in text, the images will become much more powerful. In order to have an effective homepage, the following content is necessary: • • •

Sub-headline Value proposition Calls-to-action

The purpose of the sub-headline is to supplement the current headline. The headline plays an important role in forming the first impression. An effective headline should portray the end benefit of Math Adventure, and intrigue the audience enough to have them continue reading. The current headline does this quite well; however, a sub-headline is required to have a specific explanation of what Math Adventure can offer, for whom, and how it is useful. With a headline and sub-headline, do not try to cater to everyone. Focus on the parents to get them interested with Math Adventure events. By adding a sub-headline to complement the current headline, as well as adding three key points such as benefits and features, it will result in a value proposition. It is important to give visitors an idea of what Math Adventure is just by looking at the homepage. The homepage should be able to answer questions such as: • • • •

What is this site about? What can I do here? What problem does Math Adventure solve? How is it useful to me?

The value proposition to be easy to understand, so using appropriate tone and language is crucial. If users cannot understand what an organization does just by looking at the home page, then they will quickly become uninterested. The last component to add to the homepage are calls-to-action. Calls-to-actions are important because they avoid dead ends by creating forward paths. The only call-to-action on the homepage right now is the newsletter sign up. However, since the homepage is ineffective at explaining what Math Adventure is, visitors have little reason to sign up for the newsletter. Also, a newsletter is not a forward path. You want to think about where you want your visitors to go from the homepage. When doing so, it is also important to not have an overload of choices by sticking to around 3-4 calls-to-action. For example, you can have calls-to-action that links to the about page, the event registration page, and the donations page.

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Revamping Blog Content A blog can provide many benefits to an organization if done correctly. One of these benefits is bringing in new visitors through search by having new and a variety of content. A blog is also an opportunity to connect with others interested in the same cause through people sharing the blog post, or coming to an event after reading a post. It is also a way of sharing the story of an organization by writing about impacts that the organization has, as well as the events that has taken place. Lastly, a blog can show supporters that an organization is active and effective, which is helpful for gaining new supporters. A majority of the current blog posts on the Math Adventure website are quick summaries of articles, around 100 words, and a direct link to that article. While it is fine to summarize and the key findings of reports or studies, it is important for each blog post to have at least 40o words so that it can be considered substantial by the audience and by search engines. To add more content in each blog post, consider explaining in-depth how the resources that are being shared are relevant to Math Adventure, or include a list of key takeaways that the Math Adventure organization got from reading the article. The other types of blog posts are ones related to the Math Adventure organization itself. There are currently two blog posts for each of the video that were created, and one for the sample puzzles. These kinds of blog posts are great for displaying the impact that Math Adventure has on the community. However, the blog posts needs much more text in them. With the video blog posts, details such as event location, event date, explanation of how the event theme was formed, number of attendees, and so on, provide useful context to prime the readers. There also needs to be a wider range of blog posts related to Math Adventure for the blog to be an effective tool to use for conversion. Other types of blog posts to consider are: • • •

The impact of donations and volunteers Stories of how a community was served Interviews with volunteers and donors

Volunteer Page Volunteers are of huge value to nonprofit organizations because they increase community engagement, reduce cost of services, and can have a wide range of expertise. In order for Math Adventure to quickly expand to other schools, it is imperative to have the necessary amount of information available to get people involved. The only way to get information about volunteering on the Math Adventure website is by visiting the FAQ. This makes it difficult to find, and limits content related to volunteers into a single paragraph. This can be solved by creating a page dedicated to volunteers, and adding that page to the top navigation bar. This will make volunteer information easily accessible, and will play a huge role in converting the audience into supporters. Some information to include in this page are: • • • •

Mission and history of Math Adventure Description of roles Expectations for conduct and behavior Contact information

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The donations page is a great page to refer to when creating the volunteer page. It has a clear callto-action, mission statement, contact information, powerful visual, a “thank you,” and a section which explains exactly how donations helps Math Adventure students and events.

CONTENT AUDIT A content inventory was created to have a clear understanding of what is on the Math Adventure website and social media accounts, and why it is there. Using the content inventory, a qualitative content audit was done to evaluate the content elements and information assets. For the most part, the Math Adventure website is complete and consistent. There are headings, the layout of each page are similar, and there is a consistent tone. However, there are some broken components such as the PDF link in the Schedule page, the heading of each page should be in H1 tags, some pages can be consolidated, the format of the title tags are not consistent, and many pages share the same metadata description. The following key recommendations, to help with clarify messaging, are a result of conducting a content inventory and a qualitative content audit: • •

Consolidation of Pages Removal of the FAQ

Consolidation of Pages The About Us page & What is Math Adventure pages share many similar elements. They both have the same opening paragraph, same call-to-action to the video reel, same pictures of events, and include testimonials from parents and kids. As such, it is far more efficient to combine these two pages into a single that explains both Math Adventure events and the organization itself.

Figure 3. Side-by-side comparison of the What is Math Adventure page, and the About Us page.

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The Benefits of Hosting & Hosting Details pages can also be consolidated because there is little content on the benefits page. The Schedule page can be replaced with this consolidated page for hosts because it currently only redirects to the registration page or the hosting details page, and does not have enough unique content to warrant a separate page for its own. It repeats the same content regarding benefits of hosting, has a broken PDF link, and uses a duplicated image. By consolidating these four pages into two, it allows room for new content if needed, it is more efficient in providing information to visitors because there are less pages to look at, and it reduces confusion due to a simpler navigation flow.

Removal of the FAQ FAQ’s can be a valuable tool to reduce high-touch communication for a website that offers a service with many technicalities, rules, and components. On the other hand, there are many reasons why FAQ’s are bad for a website that does not require one, such as having duplicated content, questions people rarely ask, or indicating that there are many problems with the product or service. In the case of Math Adventure, the FAQ is a sign that the website is currently not effective at informing visitors. For example, the FAQ has content about volunteers and coaches because there is no information about these two roles anywhere else on the website. It would be easier to find this information on a page dedicated to them, rather than hiding the information in the FAQ, where it is mixed up with other content. After implementing the recommendations in this report, as well as other recommendations from the class, the FAQ page will be filled with duplicated content that can be easily found throughout the website, making it unnecessary and safe to remove. If a FAQ page is deemed necessary in the future, it is important to implement them correctly. First, make sure to use an FAQ page as a last report. FAQ’s can quickly become information dumps, a place to store content that cannot be put anywhere else. This leads to problems such as an unfocused purpose, difficult navigation, and inconsistency of information. Next, make sure the questions are actually frequently asked. The FAQ is not a place to share new or uncommon information. Lastly, keep the questions organized by breaking them down into common categories.

Figure 4. An example of an effective FAQ. The links redirects users to appropriate section of the FAQ that contains the answer.

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Final Recommendations The following recommendations from this report are ranked from most urgent to least urgent: 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

Add text content to the homepage a. Sub-headline b. Value proposition c. Calls-to-action Consolidate pages a. About Us & What is Math Adventure b. Benefits of Hosting and Hosting Details i. Replace the Schedule page Add a page for volunteers Create substantial and a variety of content for the blog Remove the FAQ

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