The U.S.-Japan Council (USJC) is a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Japan. It achieves its mission by fostering people-to-people relationships between leaders in the U.S. and Japan. USJC hired Brick Factory in 2019 to redesign its organizational website, www.usjapancouncil.org.

• Program Strategy & Planning
• Information Architecture
• Online Fundraising 
• Website Design
• WordPress Development

Design

The previous version of the USJC had a dated design and wasn’t optimized for mobile.  We created a new look and feel that uses photography to highlight the people-to-people connections USJC fosters.  The new site highlights USJC’s programs and events, and works to encourage visitors to join or donate to the organization.  The new site was built to be responsive, meaning it looks just as good on mobile devices as desktops.

WordPress Development

The previous version of the USJC site was built with a simple Content Management System that the organization had outgrown.  Brick Factory performed a discovery process with USJC aimed at defining the project requirements so that we made the right technology choices.  Brick Factory ended up rebuilding the site in WordPress, and using Mailchimp for mass email and Stripe for ecommerce.

English and Japanese Language Sites

USJC publishes most of its content in both English and Japanese.  One of the challenges of its previous site is that the English and Japanese language sites were completely separate.  So all edits needed to be made in two different systems.  On the new site all content is managed from WordPress, saving USJC significant management time.  

Ecommerce

On the previous version of the USJC site the ecommerce capabilities were rudimentary.  As part of the redesign, Brick Factory built new ecommerce capabilities using Stripe.  USJC supporters can now make donations, sign up for yearly memberships, and join the Emerging Leaders program online.