Natural Gas Vehicles for America is a national trade association dedicated to the development of growing the market for vehicles powered by natural gas. While at Actual Size in 2018, I researched, designed and helped develop a new website for NGVAmerica.org.
Over the years, NGVAmerica.org became inundated with the minutiae of natural gas vehicle news, white papers and research while the organization’s fundamental message was buried under the details.
After conducting interviews with NGVA stakeholders and surveying the site, we redesigned NGVAmerica.org to emphasize the benefits of natural gas vehicles through a clear and comprehensive site overhaul.
At Actual Size, we followed an iterative approach to design throughout the stages of discovery, creative development, visual and functional design, production and deployment. I assisted lead web developer Tiff Setzler in the build of the project.
We needed to examine NGVAmerica.org’s sitemap, content and analytics to get a better idea of how the site is being used. A competitive analysis illustrated the landscape for vehicle alternative fuel consumption. Through that research, we identified a primary audience of policy makers, fleet managers and organization members.
NGVA’s message of “natural gas vehicles are clean, powerful, ready now and affordable” emerged as the navigation for the website. We used that theme to outline six content areas for the menu: Why NGV?, Environment, Vehicles, Fuel, Policy and Opportunities. We assisted NGVA stakeholders in crafting new content and messaging to fit into those categories.
After drawing inspiration from websites by major car manufacturers and alternative energy advocates, we zeroed in a ‘clean’ and ‘powerful’ motif for the new NGVAmerica.org. Our goal was to strike a balance between showcasing the strength of industrial vehicles and conveying the environmental benefits of natural gas.
Lackluster mobile traffic numbers indicated that the new site required a dynamic and responsive display. Additionally, the old NGVAmerica.org did not integrate its latest headlines, so we added the most recent news to each landing page to circulate users through new industry reports. We also created a sortable resources page where users can search through helpful documents and media.
Once wireframes, mockups, style guides and prototypes were approved, we jumped into development of the new NGVAmerica.org by leveraging emerging page builder technology that ensured design would be responsive for all screen sizes. Through a Wordpress framework, we created a content management system that enabled the client to make updates and post news stories.
The new NGVAmerica.org successfully defines the organization’s core message while affording its users an uncomplicated experience with easily-consumable information. Early returns were promising, as visitors to the site were up 132 percent year over year in the month after launch. Mobile traffic more than tripled during that time.