Respite Care Association of Wisconsin

Respite Care Association of Wisconsin (RCAW) approached the Stellar Blue team with the website and marketing challenge of building a clean, new site that made it easier for site visitors to find the most important services and programs RCAW provides. 

Client Goals

RCAW has a variety of audiences that all have very different needs, and the current site made it very cumbersome for users to find the information that most directly pertained to them. There was an overwhelming amount of content on the existing site, and key pieces of information were very difficult for users to find. 

As a central hub for respite care in the state of Wisconsin, RCAW wanted to make their Respite Care Registry more prominent and easier to access on the site. They wanted to make it as seamless as possible for users to find, join, and search the registry without any barriers. 

It was also very important for RCAW to highlight the vast amount of free training and grants they have available as a key message on their new website. 

Solutions

The Stellar Blue team started the project with a strategic discovery process with the RCAW staff to uncover the most important goals and messaging components of the new site. By defining these most important strategic elements at the beginning of the project, the Stellar Blue Team was able to execute the project with a unified approach throughout the design, development, and marketing processes. This process also helped define the sitemap and content themes for the website, helping to organize the new content in a way that made the most sense for site users seeking information on the site.  

The resulting sitemap provided a “less is more” solution by simplifying the main navigation and submenus around the key programs—training, grants and the registry—that users most often seek out. These key services were also called out visually on a section of the homepage so users could identify with what most applied to them. 

It was discovered at the onset of the project that many people in RCAW’s target audience are not even familiar with the term “respite care” or know that these services are available or apply to them. To overcome this challenge, Stellar Blue created and edited videos for RCAW that explain respite care immediately on the homepage. The homepage also included obvious callouts for the two different audiences with clear call-to-action buttons for the programs that most directly pertain to them. 

Knowing that RCAW’s target audience is very familiar with disabilities, one important addition to the site was the inclusion of an ADA compliance tool that makes the site accessible for all audiences. This tool keeps ADA compliance updated dynamically, thereby taking the worry away from extensive maintenance required to keep the website ADA compliant.  

Stellar Blue is also working with the RCAW team to optimize their site content. This focus on continued improvement will help users better understand the services RCAW provides and will help search engines index the site for better search engine optimization.