IMPACT Helps Columbia Association Play to Its Strengths

Columbia Association (CA) is a nonprofit community services corporation that provides a wealth of recreational, cultural, and community services to the more than 100,000 residents of Columbia, Md., and nearby towns.

The association approached IMPACT for assistance with its website and digital marketing. Because of the vast amount of content on the former site, a website scoping project was conducted before web design began.

As part of this scoping project, the IMPACT team analyzed CA’s search traffic and identified five critical categories of web inquiries, CA Testimonialincluding:

• Facilities
• Membership
• Classes & Schedules
• Events
• Community Programs

Exhaustive research and interviews were then conducted with internal teams and website users to effectively map out a game plan. To streamline functionality, IMPACT trimmed CA’s top-level menu from 16 items to 7 – redirecting focus to those services the data showed that customers were truly interested in. To deliver a more accessible user experience, these five core components were then applied to the site’s entire navigation.

Finally, IMPACT designed a new look and feel for the CA site, adding a lot of new, informative content to the homepage and incorporating more of CA’s brand colors throughout.

The design was programmed by the Columbia, Md.-based software development services company, Thorn Technologies, as they have been a valued part of CA’s website team for many years.

The website successfully launched in August 2019 as a result of the collaboration between IMPACT Marketing & PR, Columbia Association, and Thorn Technologies team members.