Overview
YCON is a civic engagement platform dedicated to monitoring political, security, and humanitarian developments across the region. The organization’s mission is to deliver accurate information, insightful reports, and actionable analysis to promote dialogue and accountability.
When YCON reached out, they were looking to revamp their existing website into a modern, intuitive platform that could better serve their growing audience and present their vast repository of reports, programs, and advocacy projects with clarity and impact.
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The Goal
The new YCON website needed to:
- Establish a clear and professional digital presence aligned with YCON’s values and vision.
- Simplify access to the organization’s large library of reports, programs, and advocacy materials.
- Enhance performance, SEO, and overall user experience.
- Provide an intuitive content management workflow for the YCON team to easily publish and categorize their work.
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My Role
As the web developer and designer, I was responsible for:
- Designing the entire website layout and visual hierarchy.
- Developing a functional, CMS-driven website on the Wix platform, enhanced with custom JavaScript logic via the Wix JS SDK.
- Optimizing performance, SEO, and user interaction through tailored solutions.
The project was designed and built from the ground up, balancing functionality, accessibility, and the professional tone essential for a civic organization.
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Tech Stack
- Platform: Wix
- Custom Development: Wix JS SDK
- CMS: Wix Collections
- Hosting: Wix Cloud Infrastructure
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Timeline
September 22, 2025 – October 3, 2025
A focused 11-day sprint covering design, development, optimization, and deployment.
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Key Challenges & Solutions
1. Filtering and Sorting
YCON’s content structure required filtering and sorting capabilities for posts across several sections, including Reports, Programs, and Advocacy.
Since Wix doesn’t natively support advanced filtering, I leveraged the CMS Collections and Wix JS SDK to implement a custom filtering logic.
This allowed users to explore content dynamically without page reloads, maintaining a smooth browsing experience while keeping the backend efficient and clean.
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2. SEO and Performance Optimization
Given YCON’s large content volume, balancing speed and SEO was a core challenge.
To optimize both, I implemented multiple strategies:
- Pagination: Limited posts per load to minimize initial fetch size while providing “Load More” functionality for smooth content expansion.
- Selective Data Fetching: Queried only essential fields from the CMS, reducing payload size and improving load time.
- Client-Side Rendering Strategy: Certain non-critical elements were loaded after the main content to improve perceived performance, a tradeoff that slightly impacted SEO but greatly enhanced user experience.
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Outcome
The new YCON website successfully replaced the legacy system, with all traffic seamlessly redirected from the old domain.
Feedback from the organization was overwhelmingly positive, the new platform provided faster loading times, easier navigation, and a better reflection of YCON’s identity as a forward-thinking, research-driven organization.
Most importantly, early engagement metrics showed improved visitor interaction and retention, confirming that the platform not only looked better but worked smarter.
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Final Thoughts
This project highlighted how creativity and technical adaptability can coexist, even within the constraints of a hosted platform like Wix.
By combining smart optimization, clean UX, and thoughtful content structuring, YCON’s new digital home now serves as both a public information hub and a living archive of their impact.
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Gallery
A collection of images that show the prev and the current state of YCON website, which highlight the amount of enhancement done on the user interface and website design.
Those images were captured on a large screen size 2560 x 1440
Old website:
New website:
