AO North America is a region within the AO Foundation: a medically-guided, not-for-profit global network of surgeons that provides education, innovation, and research for the surgical treatment of trauma and musculoskeletal disorders. AO North America came to Online Optimism looking for a microsite to house their blog posts, press releases, and announcements while maintaining brand consistency with their main website at aona.org.
AO North America’s previous blog system was built on Sitecore, which proved challenging for their team to manage and offered limited flexibility for content creation. We developed a new microsite that offers both WordPress’s intuitive editor and a more fully featured page builder option, giving the AO North America team both ease of use for everyday posting and advanced layout capabilities when they need more creative control. This dual approach ensures that team members of all technical skill levels can contribute content efficiently while maintaining professional presentation standards.
AO North America’s new blog features dedicated resource hubs for each of their specialized medical communities, like hand surgeons, trauma surgeons, and reconstructive surgeons. These resource hubs make it simple for visitors to locate content most relevant to their practice area, improving user engagement and information accessibility. The hubs also feature prominently on the front page of the blog, allowing immediate navigation to each category and reinforcing AO North America’s commitment to serving diverse surgical communities with targeted resources.
We adapted and extended AO North America’s existing brand identity to keep the microsite feeling familiar and cohesive with their main website, but fresh and interesting for both new and old blog readers. The blog site features at-a-glance icons for each resource hub category, links back to the main site to keep information management consistent, and visually engaging layouts that make long-form content easy to browse.
