RunWenatchee is my local running club, and I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to combine my passion for running with my passion for web design on this project. The design brief was right up my alley too: keep it simple and clean, with a spark of relevant graphics to keep things interesting. RunWenatchee intends to be “all things running for the Wenatchee Valley,” and to that end the site was focused on three things – providing information about local running, delivering news about local running, and be a one-stop source for local races.
I focused the site design heavily on the content. Right away you are presented with the top 3 featured posts that really give the visual punch to your above-the-fold impression. Light tans and darker browns provides a color scheme that again gives precedence to the headlines, photos and text. I really loved the clean and modern font combination of Merriweather, Arno and Helvetica Neue that make everything so easy to read.
Your Next Race, Now
One of the major focuses of this new site was to promote running events in the Wenatchee Valley. We integrated a wonderful calendar plugin that allows staff to easily enter loads of information about every local race. Upcoming events are then prominently featured on the homepage, and in the sidebar of all interior pages.
In addition to listing all local events, RunWenatchee actually puts on a few races each year. Some of these races (Lake Chelan Marathon) have their own website, but not every race has the budget for a full site. The new site offers those races the ability to create a full-featured event page right on the RunWenatchee site. Those custom pages have spots for race-specific info, sponsor logos, photos and text. This saves RunWenatchee money on web fees while still maintaining a professional look for their races.
We’re proud of what the public experiences when they come to our Run Wenatchee website. The site is clean, well-organized and lively, and for good reason. Brad Fitzgerald took the early design concepts we had in mind and made those come to life in a singular fashion.
- Steve Maher, Partner at RunWenatchee.com
Connecting to Current Fans
The group was also already using Facebook heavily to stay connected to its members and fans, so we wanted to make sure not to lose this important link. I helped create a custom design for their Facebook page’s integration into the site. The placement (right inline with the top blog posts) and the design (matching the styling of the rest of the site instead of standing out in bold Facebook blue) helps it fit nicely in the site. The number of Facebook fans RunWenatchee had spiked immediately after the creation of the new site. Other integrations like auto-posting of new blog entries to Facebook continue to help keep the site and the fan page connected.
Run On
RunWenatchee now has a website that is easy for them to use and easy for runners to read. With increased Facebook fans, increased visits to the website and the new events pages helping increase race signups this site is going the distance!
