Santa Monica College Faculty Association
With a member base of over 400, the FA needed a system to effectively communicate important employment information and break down complicated contract articles, while making the site evergreen and easy to maintain.
About
The Santa Monica College Faculty Association (nicknamed “The FA”) is the independent union, serving all Santa Monica College faculty.
They approached us with the goal to improve the navigation and branding of their website so they could better serve their customers.
Problem
The FA had previously been hosting their website using Google Sites to serve information to their members. As time progressed, the FA team was finding it difficult to maintain and update their website and their members had trouble finding relevant information on the site.
To restore the website as an easy to access resource for members, we defined a few key areas that needed improvement: the structure of the website, the navigation, and the workflow of delivering information.
Process
We worked with the FA to understand their process of delivering content to their members. To make the adoption easier, we worked within the tools and processes they were already using.
We strategized and tested a few methods of delivering information to their members before we landed on our solution.
Solution
We worked with the Faculty Association to create a website that fit within their current operations and strengthened their delivery of information to their members. The main feature of the website is the “FA Toolkit” section, that acts as a resource section delivering summaries on key sections of the contract or terms of employment. The FA Toolkit is separated into two sections, one for Full-Time faculty and Part-Time faculty. It was important that these remain separated as the information on the same topic can be very different between Full-Time and Part-Time. The FA Toolkit is made with nested CMS collections in Webflow and takes advantage of custom code embeds to deliver Google slide presentations on the page as well as YouTube videos.
To gather information from the members, we included a survey feature that allows us to embed a google form into the web page to survey the members. This is helpful for the FA to serve their members better. Other key features include a glossary, a member spotlight, a member directory, as well as linking to important information like the contract, bylaws, and event calendar.
The Results
The FA has an established system to deliver information to their members. By using Webflow's CMS, we are able to create a system that handles navigation and organization - allowing the FA to focus on creating content for their members and spend less time maintaining the website.
The FA members are very happy with the update, often sharing how easy it is to find information on the new site.
