The American Camp Association, New England is an organization of experienced camp professionals who has, for over one hundred years, been accrediting camps and ensuring a quality experience for campers. The ACA's website shares resources, experience, and knowledge both with other camp professionals and also with campers and their families. When the ACA came to New Media Campaigns, the old site was bifurcated into two different sections catering to camp professionals and campers' families, was poorly laid out and difficult to navigate, and looked plain and institutional.
New Media Campaigns designed the new site with a fresh, colorful and dynamic layout with more intuitive menus. The new site also runs on the HiFi Content Management System, ensuring fast load speeds even with lots of images. HiFi also provides a system whereby the ACA can easily add and modify content.
The most obvious change to the new site is the bright colors, images, and graphics of the new site. The old site had images on various pages, but the new site integrates photos and graphics into the page design, with grass growing in the footers and campers running through the field of the homepage. A carryover from the old site is the subtle demarcation of sections using color--everything related to Families and Public has red menu headers, and everything for camp Professionals is in teal. The new look integrates the playfulness of carefree campers with a current and professional site layout that features lots of rich content for both the public and for camp professionals.
The new site better incorporates and features a series of Camp Stories, which are articles about the value of camp and other various subjects related to camping. The stories are featured on the homepage via rotating slides. The homepage also features another rotation that features different, highlighted sections of the website, helping to draw the visitor and guide them to relevant information.
The menus on the site are simple and easy to follow. As the visitor drills down into the site, a sidebar helps keep him oriented with a hierarchical navigation menu, and provides easy access to other articles or subjects of interest.
A Professional Calendar provides information about camp-related events happening during the year, and provides a form with which members can submit new events to the calendar, making it interactive and useful to the ACA's members and providing valuable information to other camp professionals. Pages also feature links to various social media and a feed of the ACA's most recent Tweets, ensuring that the site is involved in current social media trends and can reach its audience through multiple outlets.
The experience is rounded out with a listing of current available jobs in the New England ACA community, an exclusive members section, and pages that link to the larger American Camp Association and its resources for finding a camp.
The resulting site provides a wealth of information about camping in New England (and generally) in an attractive and functional package. At once professional and playful, the site strikes a balance and successfully caters to both of its intended audiences. Whether the visitor is a mother looking for information about the best camp for her son, or a camp director looking for helpful resources, the new site will help guide them to the information they seek. Because the site was designed in house by NMC and runs on HiFi, all of its features are fully integrated and promise a smooth experience with logical navigation and quick load times. The flexibility and accessibility of HiFi ensures that the ACA can update content as necessary and highlight whatever important events are on the horizon.