New Website - Illinois Orchid Society
The Illinois Orchid Society (IOS) is a passionate and energetic non-profit organization dedicated to the beautiful world of orchids. Their old site was built on a platform that limited their design and updating options and the information architecture design needed a major refresh to match the new needs of the organization. The graphic design needed to match the energy of their organization, to help them spread the word on orchids. On the business side, the new site had to enable membership payments seamlessly. Squarespace was the perfect solution due to its professional design capabilities, its easy e-commerce options, and its simple content updating.
Requirements and Planning
In collaboration with the IOS’s website committee, we kicked off the project with in-depth discussions and research to understand the unique needs and preferences of the Illinois Orchid Society and its target audience. There were several goals that emerged:
Photo galleries to showcase the beauty of orchids, especially those grown by members
Provide valuable resource articles to members and enthusiasts
Display upcoming events with details
Publish news and updates regularly
Attract new members to the society
Allow membership payment processing with downloadable reports
Modern and clean design
Responsive on all device sizes
Easy to update
Designing, iterating and launch!
I started by presenting IOS with design concepts and navigation, which is fairly straightforward with Squarespace, with drag and drop page navigation, and saved sections that i could re-use on other pages as is, or modified slightly, to keep the design consistent. The IOS team appreciated the mock-ups as it’s often so hard to talk conceptually about informatiion organization. I could show them potential design options - for example grid versus list layouts of news articles or events and that really helped them understand how Squarespace works and what they wanted in the design for launch. I also used Squarespace’s great seelction of stock photos (yes, they have several kinds of orchids) as placeholders, as well as Squarespace’s new AI-generated copy creator, also as placeholder or starting points.
We iterated on page layouts for a few weeks as IOS developed content, and finally we launched a rather large (more than 30 pages) website! The IOS tema was thrilled with the final product, and I was thrilled with their feedback:
“We have received overwhelmingly glowing feedback on the new website. “LOVE your new website!” and “The site is amazing!” and “The new site is incredible!” are just some of the things we’ve heard from members. Our experience working with Judy was exceptional, start to finish. Judy’s approach was collaborative and flexible. Judy very thoughtfully and skillfully aligned the capabilities of Squarespace to the needs of our organization to produce a website that far exceeded our expectations.”
One last note: I always create a custom light-hearted “error” page (404, page not found) for clients as a custom 404 page helps with SEO. It’s also an opportunity to create a fun touchpoint with their audience, and well, it’s just a humorous thing I enjoy. For IOS, I thought for a second and come up with this - hopefully it’s never needed but if it is, I hope the recipients get the joke.
