StreetWise

Background

StreetWise is a Chicago-based nonprofit workforce development agency that helps people facing homelessness and poverty move toward self-sufficiency with dignity. Through employment opportunities, support services, and its well-known StreetWise magazine, the organization gives vendors a way to earn income while raising awareness around poverty and homelessness in Chicago and beyond.

But the old StreetWise website was not doing enough to support that work.

The site was difficult to update, key content had become outdated, and the vendor map, one of the most useful tools for connecting people with nearby StreetWise vendors, was hard for the team to maintain. The website also did not fully reflect the organization’s message of entrepreneurship, empowerment, and community impact.

StreetWise needed a website that was easier for visitors to use and easier for its internal team to manage. It also needed to move away from a WordPress setup that had become limiting and costly.

Marcel Digital, an Umbraco Platinum Partner based in Chicago, worked with StreetWise to redesign and rebuild the website on Umbraco Cloud.

Solution

Marcel Digital used Umbraco Cloud to create a more flexible, cost-effective website that gives StreetWise full control over its content.

The new website was designed around clearer navigation, stronger storytelling, and a better user experience for people looking to understand StreetWise, support the organization, or find vendors nearby. The homepage was rebuilt to better explain StreetWise’s mission and place its message of entrepreneurship and empowerment at the center of the experience.

The vendor map was also improved so the StreetWise team could more easily add, edit, and manage vendor locations. That made an important part of the website more accurate, more useful, and much easier to keep current.

For the internal team, Umbraco Cloud gave StreetWise a simpler editing experience and more control over day-to-day content updates. Marcel Digital also connected Umbraco Cloud with its Visual Studio Team Services workflow, allowing the development team to keep its code review and deployment process in place while giving StreetWise the benefits of managed cloud hosting, content deployment between environments, and automatic upgrades.

Impact

The rebuilt StreetWise website gave the organization a stronger digital presence and a more practical way to manage content.

Visitors now have a clearer path through the site, with better access to the organization’s mission, magazine, vendor information, and ways to get involved. The updated design also gives StreetWise a more accurate online representation of its brand and the communities it serves.

The internal team gained a website they can update more often without the same level of technical friction. Content editors can add and edit pages more easily, keep the vendor map current, and manage website content through the Umbraco interface.