What Happens After a Website Launch? A Look at Our Ongoing Client Partnership

United Way of Central Maryland is one of our favorite clients. And maybe not for the reason you think.

Yes, we are proud of the website we built with them. But what really makes them special to us is the relationship we built together.

Our connection began through the women on their marketing team. For years, we cheered each other on, supported one another, and stayed connected. Then they reached out to us because they needed help with something much bigger: their website.

They had a robust website, but not one that their team could easily manage. They needed a rebuild that would make the site easier to maintain internally, while still handling the complexity of a large nonprofit organization.

They also intentionally wanted to work with a local, women- and minority-owned business.

And that commitment does not stop with Drio. If you attend one of United Way of Central Maryland’s events, you’ll meet all kinds of local small businesses and contractors working alongside this large organization. When they talk about investing in the community, they truly live it.

That has carried into our relationship as well. They understand that Drio is a small business. They respect our team, our expertise, and the way we work, and they celebrate us just as they would a much larger firm. It has created a partnership built on a tremendous amount of mutual respect.

Building a website their team could actually use

In 2024, after a long year of planning, designing, developing, organizing, and migrating a very large website, we wrapped up the initial project with an in-person training session for the key members of their marketing department.

We did not simply hand over the keys and wish them luck. We sat down together and walked through the website, the nuances of the WordPress backend, and the tools we had built specifically for their team. We wanted the people who would be working on the website every day to understand how to actually use it.

Because for the United Way of Central Maryland, and for many nonprofits, a website is not simply a pretty brochure, it is a functional tool. The team needs to be able to publish information, promote programs, launch initiatives, tell stories, respond to changing needs, and connect people with resources without waiting on a developer for each small task. The ability to manage that work themselves was one of the main reasons they wanted to redesign the website in the first place. And that is exactly what has happened.

Today, their team creates pages, updates existing content, publishes blog posts, adds events, swaps photos, and makes homepage changes on their own. Renee Beck shared that the pre-built templates we created have given their team clear parameters to work within, without having to come back to Drio every time they need a new page or update.

“We feel a lot more ownership over the site. It feels like our site, and we can update it in real time instead of constantly asking someone else to do it for us.”
— Renee Beck, United Way of Central Maryland

A website that keeps evolving

United Way of Central Maryland operates as its own organization, but it also follows brand and design standards established by the national United Way organization. As those national brand standards have evolved, the website has needed to evolve too. That has meant new colors, updated logos, changing design elements, and other visual updates throughout the site. To date, UWCM is probably our only client that has approached a relatively new website this way, but it works.

Instead of treating the website as something that was finished the day it launched, we built it with enough flexibility to continue adapting. That is something we aim to do with every WordPress website we create, whether it is a six-page small business site or a large nonprofit website with hundreds of pages.

Nearly two years later, the UWCM website continues to change, grow, and provide their team with the tools they need to reach their audience. And that is exactly what we want a website to do.

They give us direction and let us run with it

We have worked on several larger initiatives with United Way of Central Maryland this year, and those projects tend to be some of our favorites. Drio thrives when a client comes to us with a goal, a problem, or even a rough idea and gives us room to figure out the best way to bring it to life.

Could you hand us a completed design and ask us to execute it? Absolutely. But the work that really fuels us is when we have a seat at the table.

“We needed a better provider, someone who listened and understood the complexities of our work and could help us simplify it. That’s exactly what Drio did.”

With UWCM, we regularly meet with their team, talk through ideas, share recommendations, challenge things when we think there may be a better solution, and keep working together until we land on the right path.

A great recent example is their new Dine United campaign.

Dine United gives local people and businesses a fun and simple way to support the United Way of Central Maryland. Participants can dine at participating local restaurants, with a portion of proceeds supporting UWCM’s work in the community.

Their marketing team came to us with the campaign concept, their content, and a simple wireframe showing the general direction they had in mind. From there, our team took it and ran with it.

We translated that starting point into a polished, functional campaign landing page that feels distinct enough to support the Dine United campaign while still fitting naturally within the larger UWCM website.

And the page is still evolving. View the Dine United page here.

Knowing when to DIY and when to call Drio

One of the things that makes our relationship with UWCM work so well is that their team has become comfortable making their own day-to-day website updates and that is exactly how we love to support them.

They do not need to submit a support request every time they want to change a sentence, swap an image, or publish something new.

That independence has had a real impact on how quickly their team can respond to opportunities.

When United Way served as the fiscal support for BGE’s grant helping people with energy payments, their team built the page on the website and updated it daily. When one team member was out, someone else could step in and make the necessary edits. Renee told us that having that kind of flexibility gave United Way the confidence to say, “Yes, we can do that,” when partners approached them with opportunities.

But they also know when a project has moved beyond a simple content update and it makes sense to bring Drio back into the conversation. Dine United is a perfect example.

As part of the campaign, we introduced new page layouts that can eventually be carried into other areas of the website. We are also developing filtering functionality that will allow visitors to browse and search participating restaurants more easily. That functionality required more complex development work, so instead of their internal team trying to piece together a solution, they pulled us in.

What an ongoing website partnership can look like

For United Way of Central Maryland, having Drio as an ongoing website partner means their internal team can manage the day-to-day work while still having access to us when they need more complex support.

That can include:

• Launching new campaign landing pages
• Adding new layouts and design elements
• Updating the website as brand standards evolve
• Building custom functionality
• Improving how users find and interact with information
• Expanding existing sections of the website
• Helping determine the best technical approach before development begins
• Training internal team members so they can confidently manage routine website updates

And perhaps the best validation of that model came directly from Renee:

“Even if we can do more internally now, we’re still keeping you as a partner because of the value and results Drio provides.”
— Renee Beck, United Way of Central Maryland

The goal is not to make clients dependent on us for every website change. It is to give them a strong, flexible WordPress website they can actually use, with an experienced team available when the next big idea requires a little more strategy, design, or development.

Your website should grow with your organization

A website launch should not be the end of the relationship. Organizations change. Campaigns launch. Brands evolve. New programs are created. Audiences need different things. Technology changes. Your website should be able to keep up.

That is what we love most about our partnership with United Way of Central Maryland. Their website is not sitting untouched nearly two years after launch. Their team is using it, changing it, learning from it, and bringing us back in when they want to take the next step. And that is exactly how we believe a website should work.

Your team should be able to own the day-to-day. And when you need something bigger, whether that is a new campaign, new functionality, a design evolution, or simply someone to help determine the best path forward, you should have a partner who already understands your organization and your website.

These are the kinds of partnerships we build at Drio. If your organization needs a website your team can actually manage and a partner who can step in when the next big idea comes along, we’d love to talk. Contact us.