Desert Botanical Garden came to LaneTerralever with the goal of creating a website that would turn site visitors into Garden visitors, allow the Garden to better serve its current visitors, increase exposure to Garden events and information, and provide an opportunity to connect with new audiences. This new site needed to exude a clear brand identity and serve both the Garden and the visitor. With this charge, we set out to create a site that provided users with a frictionless and informative experience.
One of the biggest gaps we identified with the original site was that it lacked digestible and engaging content. The content existed but wasn’t being used in an impactful way. We worked with Desert Botanical Garden’s marketing team to create content that highlighted the Garden’s many events, programs, venues, and memberships to be featured on the new streamlined and more visually engaging website. By incorporating dynamic content, social platform integration, and easy transitions between parent-pages and eCommerce ticketing into Desert Botanical Garden’s new site, we were able to help engage potential guests and increase revenue through online ticket sales. A botanical garden that exudes such beauty and innovation clearly deserves a website to match.
This website redesign project sought to accomplish multiple goals to benefit both guests and the Garden itself. Through the newly redesigned website, Desert Botanical Garden hoped to primarily increase membership and attract donors. In addition, we had to find a way to easily share conservation efforts, allow users to register for classes online, market events, programs, and educational opportunities, create an easy way to purchase tickets, and increase the overall exposure of the Garden.
Their previous website was outdated and not very user-friendly; it did not reflect the exciting programming going on at the Garden and made it difficult for visitors to purchase tickets or become members. This was, in part, due to the previous ticketing website being custom-built, which made it difficult to integrate with the gateway ticketing platform. We had to find a way to keep the look and feel cohesive and the transition seamless as users moved from the main site to tickets.dbg.org. In addition, the mobile experience the site offered was dodgy at best. This made it difficult for a large audience to engage with the website, ultimately leading to lost revenue opportunities for the Garden.
When creating the content, layout, and design we relied on the following guiding principles to help create a site that serves both the garden and its visitors:
In order to achieve the goals laid out for the new site, we designed a fully responsive site that incorporated social media and event calendar capabilities seamlessly through the Garden’s main webpage. Every page is cohesively imbued with a vibrant color palette, modern typography, and dynamic media content featuring photos and videos of the Garden that work together to bring the beauty of the Garden into the website itself. Together, these elements serve to feature the balance of lifestyle, specifically guest diversity and inclusion, with the natural beauty of the Garden.
Many of the site’s forms previously existed in PDF format, which we converted to vibrant HTML interface which fits properly on mobile devices. This made the site functional for mobile users, a crucial feature considering that 70%+ of traffic to the site is coming from mobile.
All of our efforts aimed to ensure the new site is as easy to navigate for the Garden’s visitors as possible. This meant that they should have easy access to information about tickets, memberships, booking venues, volunteering, donating, and getting involved with events at the Garden, all of which is presented clearly on the site’s new homepage. Not only was this information made easily accessible, but it was also essential when guests are navigating from one page to another.
We also integrated a dynamic calendar feature into the site, allowing users to view a slider of events on the homepage, plan their visits through the calendar module, or view suggested “you may also like” events on the site, thus creating more opportunities for visitors to engage with the Garden online.
When measuring the success of this project, we looked at ticket sales, volume of traffic to the site, driving a younger demographic of users, and the conversion level of site visitors to Garden visitors. So far, the new site has been a resounding success by all measures.
Online revenue increased
Online transactions increased
Site visitors increased
Unique page views increased
Site users age 25-34 increased
Mobile site visitors increased
The newly redesigned Desert Botanical Garden website is the perfect balance between lifestyle and Garden beauty that users can experience both online and in person. The simple textural components added depth, and the vibrant color palette provides a modern look and feel that was able to showcase the content in a more clear and digestible way. Information about the Garden is paired with photos and videos of the events, programs, and grounds to entice site visitors to become Garden visitors.
Don’t believe us? Ask their visitors who reached out following the launch.
"This site makes me proud to be a Member."
-Desert Botanical Garden site visitor
“The checkout experience ‘feels friendlier.’ Very DBG!”
-Desert Botanical Garden site visitor
“Nice feature to be able to view membership, order history, and tickets!”
-Desert Botanical Garden site visitor
Since the launch of Desert Botanical Garden’s redesigned website, we have taken over the management of their Google Grant budget.
When working with a non-profit organization, Google donates up to $10,000 in free paid search ads. The challenge is that they cap the ability to bid on keywords that cost more than $2.00. Desert Botanical Garden tasked us with maximizing this budget to help increase their online footprint, thus driving more traffic back to the newly redesigned website.
Previously, the Garden had been spending an average of $2,000-$3,000 a month of their allotted Google Grant budget. Since we have taken over, the average monthly spending has been raised to $5,600, with peak months reaching the $8,000 mark. This increase has been made possible by our expansion of keyword bidding into different areas including events, classes, and venues that the Garden had previously not utilized.
Through these efforts, we have been able to continue our successful partnership with Desert Botanical Garden and drive qualified traffic to their website.
