National Association of State Conservation Agencies

Organization Overview:
NASCA is The National Association of State Conservation Agencies. It exists to serve and represent fifty-five state and territory conservation agencies of the United States. These agencies administer soil, water, and related natural resource conservation programs, including land management, water conservation, erosion control, and renewable energy. NASCA works to facilitate communication and information sharing among its members, as well as provide needed training, forums for policy development, and representation.

Challenges:
NASCA had been trying to use Frontpage and later some other tools to create their website, but they were getting frustrated. They needed to make changes to their website relatively often, but they just couldn't figure out how to accomplish some things. The primary challenge of the website was to make information for members easy to find. However, the information was scattered across website pages, other websites, pdf documents, power point presentations, etc. Most of this information could not be found with a Google search or other search engines.

In addition, NASCA needed to have a way for members to sign up for events, notify NASCA about matching fund grants, send out a newsletter, and interact in some other ways.

While accomplishing these tasks, NASCA also wanted to make sure that the look of feel of their website was consistent with the organization's mission.

Solution:
In order to let NASCA make most of their own updates to the website, their new website was built using the nVantage CMS. nHarmony provided training and email support. nHarmony makes some updates, but NASCA staff can add new resources, newsletter articles, and other updates to web pages.

Next, we needed to determine the best navigation system for the NASCA website, one that would facilite finding information on the NASCA webpages. Usability analysis and testing was used to determine this navigation.

However, this was not enough. Some web visitors prefer search and search was the preferred way to allow visitors to NASCA's website to find information that was actually located elsewhere or in a format other than a webpage. To solve this, nHarmony customized their Smart Search software to allow search of the various sources of information: Webpages on other websites, PowerPoint presentations, documents, etc.

In addition, newsletter software, forms for signup for events and online payments, and other interactive components were added to the system.

Not only did the website provide technologies to solve problems, but the new website design captures the essence of their role - a bit like a spiral bound field notebook with page tabs for the major sections and a strong natural theme in design.

Results:
Phone calls and emails about where could various things be found dramatically dropped once the new website was complete

And just as importantly, NASCA received numerous compliments about the look of the website and how helpful it was.