New Website Design

We went through and simplified our website design! It is focused on making it easier for you to get what you need.

Website Design

When we started this site, we didn’t have a lot of structure to what you would need and how you would get it.

We knew we wanted a place to get free resources and spreadsheets. We knew it should have a blog of some kind. It should talk about our book and who we are. There was a lot to it. It was text heavy and action short.

So we put all of the information on the site, but we didn’t have a good structure for how people would use it or how the parts connected.

Ove lunch recently, I had a good conversation with my design team about how we could make the site easier to use and more clear. What are the steps people should take and in what order? What information do they need at each step. More importantly what action should they take at each step?

Learn – Live – Give

What we came up with was 3 basic steps that people will take. Learn, then live, then give. Under each of those steps are very clear actions people can take.

First you will learn about budgeting. That is our focus. We are a nonprofit that teaches about budgeting. It has the most options because people learn in all different ways. We have a link to YouTube so people can learn through video. We have a book for those who like to learn by reading all of the details. There is a blog if you want to hear about updates and things we think are important to share. We will even have in person online classes soon!

Then we have the tools to help you live on a budget. These are the free downloads. You will need the budgeting spreadsheet in order to figure out your own weekly allowance (your Happy Money).

We have also found that a lot of people are trying to pay off debt and don’t know where to start. Our debt payoff spreadsheet is the easiest and most user friendly option out there. It shows you step by step, what to do. It also has a tracking section so you can see your progress and compare it back to the original plan.

After that, we hope that you will want to give back so that others can learn about budgeting too! Everything on this site is possible because of donations and people buying the book. That helps pay for the website, the hosting, all of those backend costs that add up. We’re not getting paid from any of this. Your donations don’t go to us at all.

Clear Actions

We are hoping that this helps organize things and make it clearer about what to do next. There are fewer pages on the site now. Much less text and descriptions. It is focused on what actions you can take.

The blog is where we are going to put all the longer explanations for people who like the reading and detail! I can make blog posts that are as long or as short as they need to be, but still keep the main site clean and easy to use.

Now that we are done with this effort we can focus more on the educational stuff. The in person, online classes are next! We are trying to break down all of the ideas we explain in the book so that it works in a live teaching format. It’ll just be the highlights and help applying the principles. We want people to finish the class with a working budget and an understanding of how to keep it going.

So thank you for your encouragement so far! It is wonderful to read about people from all over the world using our system. We are grateful for each person who decides to give The Happy Giraffe Budget a try.