Case Study

Delaware Nature Society

The Delaware Nature Society (DelNature) is a regional leader in conservation, caring for over 2,000 acres of open land and operating four educational centers across Delaware. Every year, their team connects thousands of people with nature through outdoor programs and preserved trails. 

Their community footprint was expanding, but their website was actively holding them back. High-traffic registration days caused frequent site crashes, and visitors struggled to find program information through hundreds of outdated pages. First Ascent stepped in to completely overhaul the site, building a dependable platform designed to support their future growth.

Scope of Work

Stakeholder Discovery and User Research
Information Architecture and Sitemap Restructuring
Content Strategy and Copywriting
Website Design and Development
Event Calendar Integration

Outgrowing a Legacy Platform

DelNature’s website has to serve a wide range of visitors, from families signing up for summer camp to donors funding conservation efforts. Over years of adding new programs and events, the site grew to more than 200 public-facing pages, with over 1,000 older webpages sitting in the backend.

The technical limitations really showed up during high-traffic moments like summer camp launch. With hundreds of families logging on at once, the site would freeze, forcing staff to take sign-ups over the phone instead.

The site also reflected years of content contributed by multiple teams without a central structure. Helpful information was hidden inside dense blocks of copy, making it tough for families to quickly find program or event details.

Pruning the Path Forward

We kicked off the project with an in-depth discovery phase, gathering input through surveys and conversations with community members and team members to learn what people actually needed from the site.

Our first priority was simplifying the site map. We audited every page on the site, cutting out outdated content and building an intuitive 50-page structure organized around the most common user needs. Whether a visitor wants to check trail hours or become a member, the path forward takes just a couple of clicks.

From there, our team collaborated with DelNature to rewrite the entire website. We stripped away confusing insider terms and dense blocks of text in favor of clear, welcoming language. The new copy shows families exactly how to explore the preserves, while making sure the impact of DelNature’s conservation and educational work shines through.

MacBook with the Delaware Nature Society website on the screen

Capturing the Outdoors On-Screen

DelNature’s greatest asset has always been the land itself. While their team had built an impressive archive of photos across all four centers, the older website layouts kept those images hidden. When designing the new site, we gave that photography center stage, showing visitors what a day on the trails actually feels like.

The color palette draws from natural earth and water tones, paired with gentle curves inspired by DelNature’s logo. We kept the pages uncluttered and put bold, high-contrast buttons right where people expect them, making it easy to sign up for a program or support their work.

Visual mockup of three pages on the Delaware Nature Society website

Rooted in Stronger Infrastructure

Once the design and content were finalized, we rebuilt the website on WordPress. Central to the upgrade was an interactive, filterable calendar. Instead of digging through multiple pages, visitors can now quickly sort events by date or location to find what they need. Most importantly, the server stays stable under heavy traffic, easily handling the rush when high-demand registrations like summer camp open.

Behind the scenes, we connected the site directly to DelNature’s donor database, Blackbaud Altru, and their email marketing in Constant Contact. Syncing these platforms eliminated clunky workarounds and cut out hours of manual data entry for staff each week. We also rebuilt their backend dashboard, giving the internal team the tools to manage day-to-day updates and publish new events entirely on their own.

Ready for Every Season Ahead

By transforming an overloaded legacy site into an approachable 50-page hub, DelNature now has a digital platform that matches their standing as Delaware’s conservation leader. In the first month alone, the new site welcomed over 81,000 visitors and logged more than 58,000 sessions with zero performance hiccups, maintaining a 94% site health score. Most importantly, the internal team has their time back while families across the region have a fast, reliable front door to explore the outdoors.