Build stronger communities

citiesofservice.org

Cities of Service

Cities of Service works with city leaders to engage their citizens and build stronger communities.

Build stronger communities

With over 235 cities in the Cities of Service coalition, they represent over 65 million people worldwide. Originally started as an initiative within Bloomberg Philanthropies, focusing on launching impact volunteer programs in cities nation-wide, Cities of Service has since grown to be a major influencer on successful models of citizen engagement around the world.

We were brought on to partner with Cities of Service on freshening up their visual brand and dramatically overhauling their digital presence to better align with their programmatic and communications goals. At the end of our six-month engagement, we launched a beautiful new data-driven website that focuses on storytelling, user engagement, and a mobile-first mentality.

The Challenge

Time for an update

Cities of Service was ready for a new website that better reflected their recent growth, new organizational-priorities, and target audiences. As we uncovered during research and user interviews, the old website was confusing to use, had low engagement, and was rarely viewed as a resource even by even some of their most active members.

The site navigation reflected out-dated priorities and was built in a way that was difficult to update.

From a design standpoint, the visual brand was muddled, ad hoc, and failed to adequately convey the inspiration behind the organization’s values and core mission.


Interactive map to explore coalition

Storytelling as a vehicle for engagement

After initial discovery, content audit, and digital audits, our team developed a strong vision for a website that would make use of their incredible local stories, and use those as a gateway to bring in new members and support a learning community.

In addition to establishing a more elegant and editorial “look and feel” that more appropriately leverages their logo, we focused extensively on finding ways to illustrate the dynamism of Cities of Service’s work through an intuitive, but unconventional grid interface.

A powerful digital tool

The home page, as well as many other sections of the new website, reads like a carefully curated collage of inspirational people, places, and projects. Our goal was to create an enticing navigational experience by guiding users through stories about places and the people within them – almost like an interactive travelogue.

  • HTML5 video background
  • Interactive map built with Mapbox
  • Dynamic taxonomic content system
  • Inline commenting and email capture on resources
  • “Liking” functionality
  • Hotjar integration

A powerful digital tool

The home page, as well as many other sections of the new website, reads like a carefully curated collage of inspirational people, places, and projects. Our goal was to create an enticing navigational experience by guiding users through stories about places and the people within them – almost like an interactive travelogue.

  • HTML5 video background
  • Interactive map built with Mapbox
  • Dynamic taxonomic content system
  • Inline commenting and email capture on resources
  • “Liking” functionality
  • Hotjar integration

Dramatic, measurable results

At the end of our six-month engagement, we launched a beautiful new data-driven website that focuses on mobile usability, storytelling, and user engagement. Since the launch in 2017, pageviews have increased by 110% and social and email shares have increased 10x since the same period last year. The most trafficked pages on the site have gone from the standard About Us and Contact pages on the old site, to their most rich stories and useful resources on the new site.

Since launch, we’ve partnered with the Cities of Service team to help turn their vision of an annual award contest and summit into a reality. We worked with them to help define the Engaged Cities Award core brand, identity, website, marketing program, and application workflow. During the first application period, the number of submissions nearly doubled their initial goal.

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