The National Institute of Minority Economic Development
The National Institute of Minority Economic Development (often referred to as ‘the Institute’) is a nonprofit organization that helps businesses of all sizes achieve success. By offering assistance in securing funding, connecting with vendors and suppliers, and entering new high-potential markets, the Institute is an established lifeline for diverse businesses in North Carolina, Virginia, and beyond.
The Project
The Institute put out an RFP, looking for a vendor to create a modern, user-friendly, and visually appealing online platform to effectively communicate their brand and drive business growth. The website they were using presented their service offerings in a way that could be confusing to business owners who were not already familiar with them. RevenFlo was awarded the project and got to work designing a reorganized website with informational videos that would help the Institute communicate their offerings and values more effectively.
Messaging
The Institute is a “parent” organization that oversees many smaller components. Institute Capital (ICAP), Institute Community Development Initiative (ICDI), the Center for Entrepreneurship (CE), and the Center for Strategic Partnerships (CSP) are all attached to the Institute but have unique value propositions. For a layperson, their old website did not do an effective job of presenting each of these component organizations’ identities and offerings. When designing their new website, we made clear messaging and website layout a top priority.
Website Development
The Institute already had an established website, full of helpful content for their audience. When designing their new website we kept all of this content. In our redesign, we changed the layout of pages so that the user journey would be simpler, from landing on the home page to contacting the Institute.
To achieve this simplicity, we laid out the home page on mobile first, with the goal of displaying everything we could in the most straightforward way. Mobile-first development is an excellent method of website design, as it forces you to keep things simple and translates very well to desktop screen sizes. This method helped us achieve an easy-to-understand layout that effectively directs users to the services they are looking for.
Video Production
In order to clearly communicate what makes the Institute an asset to business owners, we produced five videos, each focused on a different aspect of the organization. Each video consists of interviews with Institute leadership and B-roll of their offices in Durham and Charlotte. These videos are placed at the top of key pages on TheInstituteNC.org in order to increase engagement with the website and educate visitors about the Institute and their associated organizations’ service offerings.