background
Liliane Fonds (LF) is committed to a world in which everyone can participate: including children with disabilities who grow up in extreme poverty. LF informs a wide audience and raises funds from private individuals, companies and institutional investors. In order to better respond to current events and to conduct an effective online campaign, the Liliane Fonds chose Us Media as its long-term online partner. The first assignment: “Design and develop a new future-proof online fundraising and communications platform”.
- Client
- Liliane Fonds
- Assignment
- Design and develop a new online platform for lilianefonds.nl, including the implementation of the NGO suite
- Target audience
- Private individuals, volunteers, schools, press and potential employees
future proof
When commissioning the job to Us Media, LF was clear about what ‘future proof’ meant to them. Obviously, anyone visiting the website should easily find what they are looking for - this was tested early in the process which led to some optimizations. Also, a solid User Experience is required that is above all accessible and of course flexible. Different goals require different layout and content approaches. Expand Brand awareness, increase conversion and retention of existing donors and relationships are just a few examples. Another key requirement was the flexibility to experiment with variations of online campaigning and fundraising. So a lot of freedom, but not at the cost of stability while maintaining a unambiguous appearance. A job that fits Us perfectly.
a solid foundation: our NGO suite
For Us Media, developing a platform like this means starting with a solid foundation: our own NGO suite. This future-proof solution has already proven its value to many of our clients. This is due to a few aspects. First, having the complete flexibility in compiling and designing landing pages and content pages. Second, Campaigns can be set up quickly with the scalable forms platform and fast connectivity to common payment providers. Third, seamless connectivity to any online CRM platform, the NGO suite is a key benefit for a seamless integration or transition. Building on this foundation, with all the relevant knowledge we have gained in the technical, functional and design field in similar projects, means that we can add value quickly for clients such as Liliane Fonds.
key benefits
With the new website and the separate API for the management of the data flows, the Liliane Fonds gained new possibilities to achieve its online goals. LF is no longer dependent on a web agency for its online marketing tasks and there are plenty of opportunities to experiment with creative online fundraising methods. Moreover, there is much greater flexibility in working with (donation) forms and the updated CRM connection has resulted in an efficiency gain.
remote collaboration
Covid19 almost ruined the plans as we were about to start the work when the global pandemic hit and the teams from Us and Liliane Fonds were forced to work from home. As always, we were going to work together as full partners in a team and it turned out we were not able to organize in person sessions for almost half a year. For Us this was the first project in corona time. With some adjustments, the remote collaboration did not detract from the quality of the partnership and was no obstacle at all to creating an excellent online experience together.
technologies
aws
The platform runs entirely in the cloud via Amazon Web Services (AWS). Through clever caching and optimizing the way images are served, the website has become exceptionally fast - without sacrificing quality. Every aspect is scalable so optimal performance, even with large visitor numbers, is guaranteed.
imgix
Thanks to the real-time image processing service from imgix, all images are always optimally displayed in terms of compression and size for all devices and bandwidths. In addition, imgix automatically provides the correct cropping with the help of smart face recognition algorithms.
wordpress
Wordpress is the foundation for the CMS. However we heavily modified, secured and made the application cloud-ready. The images are served through the imgix service.
go live with a bang
The new platform went live with a big bang. We launched the site just before the annual Tijd voor MAX broadcast, which was entirely devoted to the Liliane Fonds; this year on Wednesday October 28. During the broadcast, the website received an extreme amount of traffic and online donations. The robust architecture of the NGO suite stood its ground and the site coped with the enormous attention without any problems.
Result
“We have truly created this new platform together, as one team, consisting of people from Liliane Fonds and Us Media. That’s a great feeling. In the end, we had to go the extra mile to be ready one time for an important feature on national TV. Every single team member has worked hard to make that deadline. When it became clear that getting all the content ready on time was a genuine challenge, Us Media stepped up to help out. To me, that is a great example of a real partnership.”