The Blood Project is an educational website focusing on communicating the vital role of blood in health and disease. The Blood Project leverages blood as a prism to explore the human body, spanning all organ systems and incorporating non-traditional areas into its content, including the history of medicine, comparative physiology, evolutionary medicine, literature in medicine, and art in medicine. The Blood Project’s primary objective is “Bringing Blood to Life.”
Their Challenge
Rather than creating 1000-page PowerPoint presentations, the client needed an easier way to present all things blood to the world via a brand-new website. The website must also have easy-to-follow navigation to organize the vast amount of information presented. We also helped the client narrow down potential website domain name possibilities and chose a winner.
The unfortunate thing is that the client had already created a near 1000-page PowerPoint presentation which took quite a bit of time and effort to present.
Our Solution
The client had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve; however, he needed some help honing what was important. We were able to wrangle all of the thoughts and ideas into a structured layout usable by all. The client provided all content and attended all design meetings. We also had multiple meetings with the client throughout the entire project lifecycle. The client was brand new to WordPress; however, he caught on very quickly.
Because of the client’s love of PowerPoint, we created a PowerPoint-like section to display all case studies. This added a level of comfort for the client. Aside from the case studies, the website would feature several other types of content. During the project, 3MW provided guidance and best practices on using PDFs, images, SEO tactics, etc. We held several training sessions with the client throughout the project lifecycle and even last-minute how-to tutorials.
We also integrated a brand new Mailchimp newsletter which automatically emails subscribers when new content is published. In addition, we created a custom email newsletter template for the client to use in the future.
The cases custom post type included a footnotes/references section to add notes to the user.
The website project was completed in two phases. From discovery to launch, the entire process took 16 months. (May 20, 2020, to October 4, 2021) This also took place during the peak of COVID.
The Results
The Blood Project Home Page
The Blood Project About Page
The Blood Project News Page
The Blood Project Health and Disease Page- Increased public education of all things blood.
- A place to organize all of the material the client wanted to tell the world about.
- The client created an “advisory board” to help provide information, knowledge, and guidance.
- A catalyst for unleashing his passion for blood.
- Ability to view the website analytics and visitor information with Google Analytics.
- Increased awareness
- Potential funding opportunities
- Improved collaboration
- Increased education of the public, medical students, and caregivers
We made many additions to the website that were not in the original scope. We also changed several things as the project morphed into what it is today. This happened because the client changed his vision as we started populating the website with content.