Sports Backers
Representing a New Conference With a Flexible and Sustainable WordPress Website
Opportunity
Design a health and fitness website for a new conference.
Solution
Build a WordPress site to handle layout changes effectively without needing to redesign each year.
Outcome
The 2017 Movement Makers conference was a great success for Sports Backers.
Movement Makers is an annual conference organized for leaders in the active living movement who want to change people’s health outcomes through programs, policy changes, and infrastructure improvements. The conference was founded in 2017 by Sports Backers, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization who develops programs and events designed to inspire people from all corners of the Richmond, VA community to live actively.
Capturing the Energy of an Event
Sports Backers needed a conference website for Movement Makers that reflected the energy, activation, and movement of both Sports Backers’ mission and the conference’s purpose. Given this was going to be an annual event and 2017 was the first of many, it was likely that the conference would grow and evolve over time. The site needed to be both flexible and scalable.
The Movement Makers conference was a completely new endeavor for Sports Backers. There wasn’t an existing website, source of content, or even much of a brand or identity to work from. Everything would need to be invented as we worked.
Our Solution
The most critical content components of the site were the agenda (i.e. schedule of speakers), promoting the speakers themselves (photos, bios, etc.), locations of events, and sponsorships (showcasing the companies sponsoring the event). Speakers drive attendance at these conferences, so it’s very important present and promote them appropriately. COLAB built the speakers section with the flexibility of future growth and evolution in mind. For example, the conference may have three keynote speakers this year and five or ten next year, depending on how the conference grows. COLAB built the site in WordPress to handle layout changes effectively without needed to redesign the site from year to year.
The Outcome
The 2017 Movement Makers conference was a great success for Sports Backers. They were happy with the site we had built for them. They were even happier in 2018 when they held the Movement Makers conference again and didn’t need to redesign or rebuild the site in order to promote a new conference that was a little different from the prior year. Sports Backers is now planning the 2019 Movement Makers conference. Despite differences from prior years, Sports Backers is able to adjust the site’s content without needing an overhaul to the design or code. COLAB’s work has given them the flexible and sustainable tool they needed to promote their annual conference.
Let us help.
If you have a project in mind or would like to know how we can help, please reach out. We’d love to hear from you.