Costa Rica Treatment Center
An addiction treatment center's site, rebuilt warmer and reorganized around how it gets read.
Client challenge
Costa Rica Treatment Center takes patients from around the world, so most site visitors are families deciding whether to send someone they love abroad for treatment. They arrive with a lot to weigh.
The site made them hunt. The same programs were split across three separate sections, the treatment approach sat several levels deep under the locations, and the reasons to trust the place were scattered. The design had aged too, and it read cold and clinical.
Our strategic approach
We audited the whole site. Most of what came back was about arrangement: the content was organized around how the business is structured, but that's not the order in which patients and their families read a site like this one.
So we rebuilt the structure around four questions, in the order they get asked. What do you treat? How do you treat it? Where does it happen? How do I start?
The design had a job of its own. A family sending someone to a country they have never seen is deciding on trust, so the site had to feel warm and current without losing the seriousness a medical decision calls for.
Solution
The site now has four top-level sections, one for each question. The programs split across three places collapsed into a single hub covering everything the center treats, and the treatment approach, which used to be buried, is now one of the four. The founders, the clinical team, the accreditations and the testimonials are gathered in one place, so the case for the center builds instead of arriving in pieces.
The new design is where most of the change is visible. It is warmer and more current, and no less serious. The brand's blue-teal stepped back and forest green moved to the front, so the palette belongs to the Costa Rican landscape rather than a clinic. The photography took an editorial, nature-forward direction that treats the setting as part of the treatment, and we wrote the art direction brief their photographer works from. A warm serif sets the feeling and a clean sans handles the information, so the clinical details never read cold. The client came to us asking for WordPress. We looked at what the site needed to do and proposed Astro and Sanity instead: a newer stack, fast to load, and with much less to keep up with over time. The team still edits every page themselves, without a developer in the loop.
Results
Costa Rica Treatment Center's site is easier to get around and better to look at. Someone can find what the center treats and how the treatment works without backing out to the menu, the reviews and the accreditations are the first thing they meet, and the design is full of nature and feels inviting. The center also came out of it with less to look after. The site loads fast without anyone tuning it, and nothing on it needs monthly attention.
