Online News Association’s goal is to develop best practices and strategies for harnessing emerging technology, pushing the boundaries of news storytelling, and cultivating a community of leadership, culture, and diversity in journalism.Â
Our partnership with ONA is a content and development-focused collaboration, with our role to assist with developing and updating content, improving functionality and security on the site, and working on their email marketing to further engage their audience and boost fundraising outreach.
Two of the most important priorities over the course of our retainer have been their security and performance and email marketing efforts, which we’ve had a hand in maintaining and improving throughout our engagement.
In regards to ensuring the performance and security of their site, we dedicated time to resolving issues that were hampering user experience, including individual block elements and links, plugin issues interfering with site functionality, and taking overarching steps to improve performance across the board.
Specifically, we dedicated time to:
- Resolving issues regarding anchor links and accordion elements working incorrectly due to the use of an outdated theme, which was causing confusion and leading to lowered user satisfaction
- Using a script too, PHP_Codesniffer, to scan for problematic code as well as using visual regression testing practices following weekly updates to ensure that bugs or other conflicts with updates to plugins on the site and the theme don’t interfere with site functions in order to maintain high quality and high levels of user satisfaction
- Ensuring proper maintenance and continued functionality by removing unnecessary and redundant code and properly serving images
But our work also extended to helping them take advantage of the integrations and other options available to them through Mailchimp. Their email outreach efforts center around spreading the word about their events, including local in-person events, virtual events, and their annual conference. However, while they were sending out emails that met their audience’s interest, they weren’t taking advantage of the integrations for Mailchimp.
Without these integrations, it was more difficult for their emails to reach their audience and for their team to analyze their data, meaning that they weren’t able to take advantage of all of the engagement data available to examine and improve their email strategy. With our help, ONA’s email marketing campaigns have become much more robust, as they utilize more of the Mailchimp features that help them reach new subscribers, maintain their current subscriber list, and provide relevant and useful information in their emails to engage their audience.
Now the ONA team can take charge of their data and do more with Mailchimp, provide a better user experience on their site, and get the high-quality support and maintenance for their site that they need. We look forward to continuing our engagement and serving as collaborative partners on their site!
