Website Strategy

The Challenge

MILSET is an international non-profit association dedicated to encouraging young people to pursue an interest in STEAM (science, technology, art, and math). Operating in six global regions — each with their own events, content, and languages — MILSET experiences unique challenges in getting the right information to the right audiences. While their website contained everything curious visitors needed to know, it was difficult to sift through the content to find it. Dated design elements also gave visitors the wrong impression of the forward-thinking association and visuals that appealed to one country alienated visitors from others.

The MILSET team realized it was time for an update. Lisette Vela Reyes, the Communication Manager at MILSET, happily took on the challenge. But without a website development team at her disposal, her first task was finding expert help. Based on a recommendation, she and her team enlisted Iversoft to build a custom strategy for a functional, modern website.

The Solution

Lisette asked us to create a website development roadmap that considered MILSET’s financial, time, and resource restrictions. We started by auditing their existing sitemap. Based on our findings, we provided recommendations in three critical areas: user experience, value proposition, and visual design.

In our research on user experience, we saw that users are divided by more than region. While most visitors are casual users who may only be interested in finding the date of an event, there are more advanced users with very different needs. To serve them both, we suggested a new structure that emphasized clear labels and taxonomy. We also found that the content directed at internal and external users was mixed in the navigation. To reduce confusion for external visitors while still providing employees with the tools they need, we suggested moving administrative content from the top of the site to the footer.

To better communicate their value proposition and bring a sense of cohesion to their website, MILSET needed to define their online brand. We gave them tailored advice for creating a digital style guide to use as a reference for everything they post.