LVT logo — Lyle van Tonder, Performance Marketing Specialist
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Built for Neither Visitors
nor Search Engines.

A full audit of savedbynature.org’s navigation and secondary pages reveals two compounding structural problems: a navigation architecture too complex for visitors to use effectively, and functional infrastructure that visitors cannot find because of where it is buried.

The site has no Contact page anywhere in its navigation. A fully functional e-commerce store and an active event calendar both exist — and both are hidden inside a secondary dropdown that most visitors would have no reason to open. Multiple pages serve content that their URLs do not describe, signalling to visitors and search engines alike that the site was not built with either audience in mind.

Overview

Critical

Navigation architecture

5 top-level items; no Contact at any level

Critical

Contact infrastructure

No contact page exists anywhere on the site

Critical

Functional system accessibility

Working calendar and shop buried under ‘WHAT’S NEW?’
 

Critical

URL-content consistency

Confirmed mismatches mislead visitors and search engines

moderate

'GET INVOLVED' structure

6 financial/volunteer options; zero for program participants

Critical

Technical stability

Widget Didn’t Load errors recur across multiple pages

Table of Contents

Buried Functional Systems

The ‘WHAT’S NEW?’ dropdown contains three items: Calendar, Awards, and Shop. Two of them are fully functional systems with genuine utility for visitors — neither is signposted anywhere a visitor would think to look.

The Calendar

savedbynature.org/calendar renders a standard monthly grid with real, populated events — the 6th Annual Inclusive Nature Hike, a Seniors Hike, an Alviso Adobe event. Operational infrastructure, actively maintained.

Accessible only via WHAT’S NEW? — a label that gives no indication a calendar exists within it.

The Shop

A complete e-commerce store: four products, PayPal and Venmo express checkout, a customer details form, delivery calculation. One discrepancy — the T-shirt lists at $27.00 and checks out at $28.00.

Accessible only via WHAT’S NEW? — the same label that contains the calendar and an Awards page.
Saved By Nature homepage from June 2025 showing the old site's top navigation with Home, Programs, What's New?, Get Involved, and About, with two red arrows — one pointing to the "What's New?" nav item and its open dropdown, the other pointing to "Shop" within that dropdown alongside Calendar and Awards — above an "UPCOMING EVENTS 2025" section reading "No events at the moment"
Screenshot of the Calendar page at savedbynature.org/calendar in July 2025, shown in a full browser window. The browser tab reads "Calendar | Saved By Nature" and the address bar shows savedbynature.org/calendar, highlighted. A small floating white label reading "Shop" appears near the top center of the page, above the hero image. The hero image shows a mountain sunset with "CALENDAR" in large white text. Below it, a timezone selector set to GMT+04:00 and a standard monthly grid for July 2025. Visible calendar entries include an Independence Day marker on Friday July 4th, a "7:00pm Free…" entry on Saturday July 5th, a "6th Annual Inc…" entry on Sunday July 13th, a "Seniors Hike f…" entry on Wednesday July 16th with a "9:00pm Cay…" secondary entry the same day, and an "Alviso Adobe…" entry on Saturday July 19th. A "Widget Didn't Load" error indicator is visible in the bottom-right corner.
Screenshot of the checkout page at savedbynature.org/checkout in July 2025, shown in a full browser window. The address bar displays a long exposed query string: savedbynature.org/checkout?storeUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.savedbynature.org&cashierPaymentId=&origin=shopping+cart&originType=addToCart&checkoutId=d35d02ee-0dd4-4663-… (truncated in the address bar). A "Verify it's you" indicator with a shield icon appears in the browser toolbar, top right. The page shows an Express Checkout section with PayPal Checkout and Venmo Checkout buttons, a "Have an account? Log in" prompt, and a Customer Details form with required Email, First name, Last name, and Phone fields. The Order Summary panel on the right shows 1 item — SBN Fish in the Forest Unisex T-shirt, Qty 1 — priced at $28.00, with Delivery at $9.99, Sales Tax at $0.00, and a Total of $37.99, beneath a Secure Checkout lock icon. A "Widget Didn't Load" error is visible in the bottom-right corner.

Missing Infrastructure

No Contact Page

A complete review of all five top-level navigation items and their dropdowns — including the four-item ABOUT dropdown (Our Story, Staff and Volunteers, Board, and Community Partners) — confirms that no Contact page exists anywhere on the site. The only contact information on the entire site is a phone number and physical address in the site footer — presented as organizational credentials, not as a participant or professional contact pathway.

The same missing pathway affects every audience the site needs to reach:

  • Healthcare providers seeking to refer patients to the Seniors Hike for Health program.
  • Probation officers seeking reentry programming.
  • Social workers identifying youth outdoor programs.
  • Community members wanting to ask a question before joining a hike.
Screenshot of the site-wide footer as it appears at the bottom of savedbynature.org/programs in July 2025, shown against a dark background. Above the footer, a donation form section is partially visible with an orange "Submit" button and Network for Good branding with a reCAPTCHA privacy/terms notice. Below that, a white "Spark Good Round Up" panel describes rounding up change on Walmart.com purchases to donate to Saved By Nature, with a linked Walmart.com nonprofit profile URL. Beneath the panel, organizational credentials read: "EIN 83-2405377, A San Jose based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with an office in Campbell, 2772 Joseph Ave #4, Campbell, California 95008," followed by the phone number (408) 627-2760 and hours "Tuesday - Saturday, 9:00am - 5:30pm PST." A red arrow annotation points from the organizational description toward the phone number.

URL-Content Mismatches

For visitors, a URL that does not describe its content is disorienting — particularly for anyone who bookmarks pages, shares links, or returns via browser history. For search engines, a URL signal and page content that contradict each other undermine how the page is indexed and how it ranks.

savedbynature.org/copy-of-donate

❌ serves the Community Partners page
❌ The URL describes a donation page duplicate; the content is an entirely different section of the site.
Screenshot of savedbynature.org/copy-of-donate in July 2025, displaying the Community Partners page. The full site header is visible: the Saved By Nature circular logo (a hawk in flight against a sunset sky, tagline "Experience the Change"), five navigation items (HOME, PROGRAMS, WHAT'S NEW?, GET INVOLVED, ABOUT), and DONATE and MEMBERSHIP (optional) buttons in orange. Below the header, a hero image shows SBN participants on a group hike holding a banner, with "Community Partners" text overlaid. Three partner logos appear beneath the hero: Open Space Authority, Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley, and REI Co-op. Two red arrow annotations point to the URL bar (savedbynature.org/copy-of-donate, highlighted) and to the "Community Partners" hero text, marking the mismatch between the URL and the page content. A "Verify it's you" indicator appears in the browser toolbar, top right. A "Widget Didn't Load" error is visible in the bottom-right corner.

savedbynature.org/copy-of-outdoor-access-for-at-promise

❌ serves the Youth Environmental & Social Justice program page
❌Documented in the Programs audit — another exposed staging URL serving live content. Not an isolated instance.
Saved By Nature Youth Environmental & Social Justice page, July 2025, showing the exposed staging URL savedbynature.org/copy-of-outdoor-access-for-at-promise highlighted with a pink arrow, alongside a two-column layout: a backpacking group photo paired with the Community Youth Enrichment section describing a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Silicon Valley, and a nighttime camping photo paired with the Outdoor Access for At-Promise-Youth section describing an Alive Outside Adventure Series camping program with Youth Alliance, each with a Learn More button, and a Widget Didn't Load error visible in the sidebar

Overall Assessment

Navigation Architecture

🔴 Poor
5 top-level items; no Contact; ‘WHAT’S NEW?’ label obscures functional systems.

Contact Infrastructure

🔴 Critical gap
No contact page exists anywhere in the site.

Functional System Accessibility

🔴 Poor
Working calendar and e-commerce store buried under ‘WHAT’S NEW?’

URL-Content Consistency

🔴 Poor
Multiple confirmed mismatches between URL and page content.

URL-Content Consistency

🔴 Poor
Multiple confirmed mismatches between URL and page content.

'GET INVOLVED' Structure

🟠 Misaligned
6 financial/volunteer options; zero program participation pathways.

Technical Stability

🔴 Poor
Widget Didn’t Load errors visible across multiple pages.

The site’s navigation architecture creates a consistent pattern: functional systems that visitors need are inaccessible without prior knowledge of where to look, and the infrastructure that would convert visitor interest into action — a contact page, program enrollment pathways, visible calendar access — does not exist or cannot be found.

This audit reflects the observed state of savedbynature.org navigation and secondary pages as of July 2025. All findings are grounded in visual and structural review of the website at the time, and are captured in page screenshots. No third-party analytics data has been incorporated into this assessment.

See how it was rebuilt

Full before/after breakdown of the homepage restructure, navigation rework, and mobile fixes.

back to case study overview
see how it was rebuilt
LVT logo — Lyle van Tonder, Performance Marketing Specialist
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