Founded in 1994 as a bipartisan agency to provide advice to the President and Congress on issues of old-age, survivors, as well as Disability Insurance and the Supplemental Security Income programs. The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) was getting hundreds of calls and even walk-ins to their office by people looking for the Social Security Administration (SSA), creating confusion for everybody. That’s when Ignition72 was brought in. The new website needed to be clean and professional, not only in assisting policy researchers, but also in providing clarity to everybody that SSAB is not the Social Security Administration!

Learning + planning

The website itself required some robust document and file support, as well as calendar and scheduling capabilities. Our team also worked to evolve the brand; Coming up with a new logo and leveraging the U.S. Web Design Standards to create a clean, focused, and easy to use interface that also immediately helps visitors recognize that they are NOT on the SSA website.

Style exploration

The U.S. Web Design Standards are quite robust, but our team has formidable experience working with it on other projects, such as for the VA and the GSA. In this case our goal was clarity and efficiency. Know where you are and get what you need quickly.

Design + development

Built in WordPress, this open source site is focused, yet easily updated and edited. Any documents from board meetings are simply updated through Google Drive, and the internal SSAB team is able to independently handle all of the frequent site updates.

With a new, clearer, and easier to use website, we have seen growth not only in the volume of traffic since launch, but in site engagement as well. Looking at the site’s analytics, site traffic has grown 75%, repeat sessions are up 25%, new users up 73%, page views up an astounding 268%, and the average time on site is up 51%. Additionally, in that time, the bounce rate has also dropped by 78%.

Founded in 1946, Hagerstown Community College is Maryland’s first community college. Over the years, they have offered hundreds of affordable courses that not only educate, but also empower the local community. Ignition72 was selected to help HCC reinforce it’s brand and better communicate with all members of the community, from students, faculty, and staff, to even local stakeholders, all through a new more engaging website.

Learning + planning

Planning employed our traditional Strategy First™ approach, with multiple in person meetings on campus to explore, understand and define the key variables for the new site, including clearer navigation, consolidated site/campus wide alert systems, and a new design that would better allow students and the community to see how HCC helps people improve their own stories.

Style exploration

Since the HCC brand is mature and established, our design team worked closely with their communications team to best represent the brand. This was instrumental in the use of colors, fonts, and the visual assets, such as the home page video or the use of photography that appears throughout the site.

Design + development

HCC accentuates and enriches the trajectories of the students that attend. It was important then, that the brand not be too heavy or overpowering. We wanted to help students see themselves on the pages of the website instead, whether they are full-time students, are attending continuing education classes, or even are part of the advanced high school student programs offered on campus.

Under contract with Digicon Corporation, Ignition72 had the opportunity to design and build a new City Schools website that welcomes all users on any device to a visually positive and robust new website. This site includes important tools like the School Comparison, where kids and parents can explore various school options. We had to ensure that the site was multi-lingual and accessible, while empowering the School District to manage, control and update all aspects of the site.  

Learning + planning

Planning involved a detailed landscape analysis, including Google Analytics data, stakeholder outreach, surveys, user testing as well as an iterative planning review with all internal City School stakeholders. Audiences and their goals were defined, content mapped, functionality documented and wireframes generated to ensure that the City Schools team considered every possibility before settling on the best solution.

Style exploration

The new City Schools website is clean and clear, with bright primary color splashes to deliver a fresh and modern message, as well as appeal to students. Photography is very upbeat and positive, always showcasing a City Schools community member. Throughout the site color is brought in to draw the eye, but also to create an overwhelmingly positive user experience.

Design + development

Tailoring the design to our specific audience was very important, so we held multiple user feedback sessions early in the design phase. Walking community members through static layouts and clickable prototypes helped us reaffirm and tweak some of our design decisions.

The site was designed from scratch to be a new Drupal 8 powered system.

The new site launched in January 2019 and within the first month it had over 179K users visit the site over 378K times, spending 2:24 minutes on site, and viewing an average of 2.9 pages per visit. Compared with this time last year this is an increase of 195% in overall traffic, a 114% increase in average time on site and  a 198% increase in page views. The bounce rate, or number of people who leave from the first page in less than a minute, dropped by over 112%.

The new site includes robust Google Analytics facilitated through Google Tag manager, so we have granular data relating to everything that happens on the new site.

The final site is hosted by our partners the Digicon Corporation.

You don’t have to ever been to DC to have heard about the traffic: the gridlock is legendary. To help, Transurban developed the 495/95 Express Lanes: A pay as you go system of toll roads that can alleviate the crush in both directions, every day of the week. But managing the process was proving tricky: Fines and notifications were issued by mail, often taking weeks to resolve. Customers had limited access to live information including costs, live video and other resources to help them better plan their journeys.

Collaboration

Ignition72 worked with the Transurban team to put in place a back-office API connection which culminates in an iOS/Android Native app. Users can register, track their tolls, access live travel information, maps and more. This means you no longer need an EZ Pass to use the toll roads, and the best information is always at your finger-tips.

The app has been in use and we have built a few marketing videos for them too.

Every year tens of thousands of building and land environmental reports are created to answer specific questions or facilitate sales and other transactions. In the past, these reports existed on paper and were cast away after they were consumed, meaning that the next owner would have to start from scratch: losing the knowledge and context, as well as continuity, that the previous reports could provide.

Ignition72 worked closely with the NESAD team to create a custom system and process that would interconnect environmental assessment companies around the country. The System: A massive database of reports that is searchable using Google Maps (address, lat/long, etc) to determine whether any existing reports exist, what type etc. Integrated into the mapping system is the ability to order updated or even new reports from the environmental teams who know the site, have the equity and the experience.

Ignition72 worked closely with the NESAD team to create a custom system and process that would interconnect environmental assessment companies around the country.

The Houston Independent School District has many websites, including one for each school. These thousands of pages exist within a fixed and rigid template, ensuring that all schools operate on an even field, with the same tools and resources. While this works for the overwhelming majority of HISD’s needs, District wide programs like the Continuing & Technical Education program (CTE) do not fit into the same template as a high school.

HISD met with the Ignition72 Strategy team, and we planned a best practice WordPress deployment, utilizing custom themes to showcase the incredible projects, situations and opportunities the HISD CTE Program represents. CTE Staff were trained to manage and control the site, making their online presence aspirational, nimble and focused.

It worked so well the rest of the district is jealous and making them take down the site!

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