Case Study: An Advocacy Website Rebuilt for a National Moment
Overview
Americans for Ibogaine (AFI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advancing public understanding and responsible medical access to ibogaine and other psychedelic medicines for addiction, trauma, and co-occurring mental health conditions — with leadership including former Texas Governor Rick Perry and W. Bryan Hubbard, the architect of the Texas Ibogaine Initiative.
By late 2025, AFI’s mission was moving faster than its website. Texas had committed $50 million to ibogaine clinical trials, more states were following, and national media attention was building toward a crescendo. The team’s self-managed Squarespace site — assembled quickly in the organization’s earliest days — couldn’t carry the credibility, content velocity, or conversion goals the moment demanded. Referred by industry peers, AFI enlisted me to rebuild their digital presence from the information architecture up.
The new site launched in March 2026 — weeks before a second Joe Rogan Experience appearance and a White House Executive Order prioritizing ibogaine research sent record traffic its way. After the news-cycle spikes subsided, the durable gains remained: roughly double the organic search impressions, 1.5–2x the organic clicks, and average Google rankings up from position 10–15 to position 7 — the first page.
- Client: Americans for Ibogaine (AFI)
- Sector: Nonprofit — Public Health Advocacy & Policy
- Services: UX strategy, information architecture, web design, custom development, SEO migration
- Platform: Hugo (JAMstack) · Decap CMS · Netlify · Bloomerang · Basin
- Timeline: ~8 weeks from kickoff to launch
The Challenge: The Mission Outgrew the Website
Advocacy is a credibility business. AFI was earning coverage from The Wall Street Journal, Fox Nation, and the biggest podcasts in the world — but visitors clicking through landed on a site that didn’t match the caliber of the movement:
- The first-iteration website couldn’t scale. Built in-house under startup pressure, the Squarespace site had no structure for a media library growing past 75 features, a roster of 21 ambassadors, or a state-by-state legislative map.
- Content updates competed with the mission. Press releases, landing pages, and bio updates needed developer-free publishing on news-cycle timelines — often same-day.
- Education was buried. First-time visitors arriving from a podcast mention needed an accessible path from “what is ibogaine?” to the research, the policy landscape, and a reason to act.
- Donation UX left goodwill on the table. Surging awareness had no purpose-built giving experience — one-time and monthly — to land on.
The Objective
Build a platform worthy of a national movement:
✅ Establish credibility that matches WSJ-and-White-House-level attention
✅ Make the case for ibogaine research clear to complete newcomers
✅ Turn attention spikes into donations, subscribers, and action
✅ Hand the team full self-serve control of content
✅ Grow organic search visibility beyond the news cycle
The Solution: Strategy-First Design, Built to Move at News Speed
Phase 1: Information Architecture & Content Strategy
The engagement started with the blueprint: a full information architecture document delivered the day of kickoff and approved within 48 hours. The IA reorganized everything around three visitor jobs — learn, follow the movement, support it — with a Learn hub (What Is Ibogaine, Research, Safety), a Legislation & Advocacy tracker, a filterable News & Media library, and dedicated paths to give or take action.
Phase 2: A Design System with the Gravity of a National Campaign
AFI’s audience spans veterans, families in crisis, policymakers, and journalists — the design had to read as institutional, patriotic, and humane all at once. I built the system around their flag-mark logo with Bebas Neue Pro headlines and Proxima Nova body text over a red-white-and-navy palette. The first homepage concept was approved the morning after delivery, and the complete page-by-page mockup package was approved within three weeks.
Phase 3: Custom JAMstack Development
Like every build I deliver, the site is custom-coded on the Hugo static site generator, hosted on Netlify with Decap CMS for content management — no plugins, no database, nothing to hack or break, and fast on every device:
- A filterable News & Media library. 75+ press features, podcasts, and videos, filterable by format — the team adds new coverage from a simple dashboard in minutes.
- Structured people collections. 21 ambassadors and the full leadership team, organized by category with expandable bios the staff manages themselves.
- A legislative tracker. An interactive state-by-state view of enacted, pending, and active ibogaine legislation.
- Purpose-built giving. Bloomerang-powered one-time and monthly donation experiences, with prominent “Donate Now” and “Give Monthly” calls-to-action sitewide.
- Campaign-ready landing pages. A dedicated landing-page collection lets the team spin up conversion pages on demand — including one built same-day for a Joe Rogan Experience feature.
- Reliable forms with smart routing. Basin-powered contact and inquiry forms that route submissions to the right inbox.
Phase 4: SEO Migration & Structured Metadata
Replatforming is where search equity gets lost — so it was migrated deliberately: 301 redirects from the legacy Squarespace site, on-page optimization, structured metadata, and clean semantic markup across every page, built to compete for the exact questions a curious nation was about to start asking.
The Results: Page One of Google — and a Platform That Kept Pace with History
The timing could not have been scripted. Within weeks of the March 2026 launch, Rick Perry and W. Bryan Hubbard joined the Joe Rogan Experience for a second appearance, and in April the President signed an Executive Order prioritizing federal ibogaine research — with AFI’s leadership at the White House. Both moments sent record traffic and donations through the new site, and it held without a hiccup.
Viral spikes make attribution murky, so the honest measure is what remained after the news cycles faded. From AFI’s Google Search Console, comparing post-launch performance against the prior site:
✅ Organic impressions doubled — and stayed doubled after the initial burst of national visibility.
✅ Organic clicks grew 1.5–2x, with click-through rate holding steady at twice the impression volume.
✅ Average Google ranking climbed from position 10–15 to position 7 — off the second page, onto the first.
✅ Launch-day agility, no developer required: the team publishes press releases, landing pages, and media features themselves — including same-day turnarounds for an Executive Order announcement.
✅ A website the whole organization is proud of: in the client’s words, “everyone agrees our website is far superior to our first iteration, and we’re elated with your work.”
Before & After: The Same Mission, a New First Impression
Before — the first-iteration Squarespace homepage: a stock photo, a single headline, and one generic call-to-action.
After — the custom rebuild: AFI’s own people in the halls of power, a mission-forward headline, layered calls-to-action, and one-time and monthly giving one click from anywhere on the site.
“Kristopher was fantastic to work with and I highly recommend him for web development and creative design projects. He delivered exactly what our organization needed, and he did it quickly, professionally, and with a genuinely helpful attitude throughout the process.
We originally learned about Kristopher through industry peers who spoke highly of both his work and his personality. After working with him for a couple of months, I completely understand why he comes so recommended.
Even though our project was for a nonprofit, I also referred Kristopher to a friend for his corporate website, and they’ve since started working together as well. Kristopher is talented, responsive, and easy to collaborate with. Highly recommend.”
— Wes Anderson, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Americans for Ibogaine
“In all my years dealing with web developers and digital marketing strategists, it is a rare but exceptional privilege when I come across professionals like Kristopher. If you’re considering anyone else as your creative technologist, you’re wasting your time. Kristopher is in a class of his own and sets the standard for true excellence.”
— Aaron Buzali, Americans for Ibogaine
Frequently Asked Questions
What platform is the Americans for Ibogaine website built on?
A custom-coded JAMstack build: the Hugo static site generator hosted on Netlify, with Decap CMS for self-serve content editing, Bloomerang powering one-time and monthly donations, and Basin handling contact and inquiry forms.
What SEO results did the redesign produce?
Comparing Google Search Console data after launch against the prior site: organic impressions roughly doubled, organic clicks grew 1.5–2x, and average ranking improved from position 10–15 to position 7 — first-page visibility. Critically, these gains held after the traffic spikes from national news coverage subsided.
How do you separate website impact from viral media attention?
Carefully — and honestly. AFI’s launch coincided with a Joe Rogan Experience appearance and a federal Executive Order, both of which spiked traffic and donations on their own. That’s why this case study only claims the Search Console gains that persisted after those bursts faded: sustained impressions, clicks, and rankings reflect the site’s structure and optimization, not a news cycle.
Can the AFI team update the website without a developer?
Yes — press features, ambassador bios, press releases, and campaign landing pages are all managed through a simple dashboard, with every change version-controlled and reversible. The team has handled day-to-day publishing since launch, including same-day announcements timed to White House news.
How long did the website redesign take?
About eight weeks from kickoff to launch: information architecture approved within 48 hours of kickoff, homepage design approved overnight, the complete mockup package inside five weeks, then custom development, content migration, and SEO redirects.
Is Your Organization’s Website Ready for Its Moment?
When the spotlight finds your cause — a podcast mention, a news cycle, a policy win — your website either converts that attention or squanders it. Let’s build one that’s ready before the moment arrives.
