Connecting Women with Free and Low-Cost Reproductive Healthcare
CareReferral – an initiative of The San Antonio Coalition for Life – is an online referral service that connects women with free and low-cost reproductive healthcare services in the San Antonio area.
Connecting Women with Free and Low-Cost Reproductive Healthcare
CareReferral – an initiative of The San Antonio Coalition for Life – is an online referral service that connects women with free and low-cost reproductive healthcare services in the San Antonio area.
How Best to Reach Women in Crisis Mode?
The San Antonio Coalition for Life had a problem.
The women their Sidewalk Advocates talked to were looking for immediate solutions to their need for things like pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD/STI tests, and information on contraception, abortion, and the new Texas Heartbeat Law.
But all they had to give these women was a simple flier.
Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, is fully online and quite pervasive. Their website is sleek, conveys professionalism, compassion and understanding, is easy to navigate, and quick to connect women with the resources they’re looking for…
… except for the resources that empower women with the truth about the dangers of abortion and contraception, and connects them with both the free and low-cost reproductive healthcare resources they’re looking for.
The Flier Wasn’t Cutting It…
Cathy Nix – Executive Director of the San Antonio Coalition for life – knew that a flier wasn’t going to cut it.
She knew they needed a website.
This website would have to convey the same level of professionalism, compassion and understanding as Planned Parenthood’s website. And it would have to quickly connect these young women with the resource they were looking for.
But they didn’t just need a website…
As Cathy watched young women walking through Planned Parenthood’s doors, she noticed that they were all on their phones, rapidly searching for answers and resources to the “problem” of their unplanned pregnancy.
In order to quickly connect these women with the reproductive health resources they were searching for, Cathy knew this new website would have to be very mobile friendly.
That’s When They Reached Out to On Fire Media
The San Antonio Coalition for Life has been partnered with On Fire Media since 2015.
Since then we’ve executed on their initial website build, a website refresh and redesign, and back-end support to keep their website optimized and functioning at its fullest potential.
When Cathy decided that she needed this new one-stop reproductive health referral website, she immediately knew we were the web designers to bring her vision to life.
Creating the Best Life-Affirming Website Online
Our team met with Cathy for an initial discovery meeting to discuss her vision and identify the primary demographic this website would target. Cathy explained that the majority of the young women her Sidewalk Counselors encountered were between the ages of 18 and 25, working and going to college, and currently living with her boyfriend.
Our team used this information to create a User Persona that would inform the design and structure of the website, and the tone of the message. We then created a BrandScript that would keep us focused on our end-user, the “problems” she was trying to solve, and the tone and imagery that would best convey sympathy and understanding to her without making her feel judged.
The goal was to treat the end-user as the intelligent and savvy young woman she is, to quickly connect her with the information she is looking for, and to empower her to make informed decisions regarding her pregnancy based on all the facts.
To this end, our designer examined multiple medical websites, their imagery, color scheme, and underlying architecture. She took the best features of those sites and masterfully incorporated them into our final design, mimicking that medical look and feel to convey a sense of authority.
One of the best features we created for this site is the dropdown menu that appears in the header of the homepage. This menu accomplishes the ultimate goal of quickly connecting the viewer with the specific service she is looking for.
The design uses soft colors to convey a sense of welcome. Images of happy and empowered women are favored over images of women holding babies as those could be interpreted as pushing a pro-life agenda, rather than empowering the viewer to make an informed and intelligent decision.
The design is optimized for mobile-friendliness. And knowing that our primary visitor would be a young Hispanic woman, we built in a Spanish language option so as to better reach her.
Making the Connections
The end result is a sleek and welcoming website that communicates empathy and understanding, has a very professional appearance, and, most importantly, quickly connects the young women with the reproductive health services they’re looking for.
