Telling the Full Story of Every Trip

Client

Mercy Medical Angels

Scope

Website Strategy and Design

Platform

Webflow

Timeframe

2025 to 2026

Role

Fractional CMO

A brand and website relaunch that gave patients, pilots and donors each a clear path, and grew site users 83% YoY.

Mercy Medical Angels has provided more than 400,000 trips to medical care at no cost to patients. Every trip takes three people: a patient who needs care, a pilot or driver who gets them there, and a donor who makes it possible. The January 2026 relaunch brought the brand and the website together to tell that whole story and give each audience a clear way in.

+83%

Site users, YoY

+115%

Organic search sessions, YoY

+97%

Homepage visitors, YoY

+144%

Engaged sessions from search, YoY

The challenge

Fifty years of getting patients to care

In 1972, a pastor and a federal engineer, both general aviation pilots, began flying patients to treatment they could not otherwise reach. That effort became Mercy Medical Angels. Today the team is small and the need keeps growing, so the website had to work harder for patients, pilots and donors alike.

One question shaped the work:

Why should you donate, and what does your gift actually do?

The site asked for support before it showed what support makes possible. The fix applied to every audience: context first, then action.

Discovery

Three audiences, three journeys

Brand, UX, accessibility and SEO audits set the baseline. Journey maps followed each audience from first awareness to action: what they think, feel and do at each step. Three themes came through:

One name leads. Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic and Angel Wings for Veterans offer the same core service under their own names. Mercy Medical Angels became the umbrella.
Show the why. The site explained how the organization works. The opportunity was to show why it matters.
One clear next step. Each audience needed its own path and one clear action.

Patient journey map: thinking, feeling and doing across awareness, consideration, conversion and advocacy

The brand

Built from the website out

The brand was discovered through the website instead of being written first. Homepage directions gave the client real pages to react to, and the brand book grew from them: color, type, photography and voice. Three voice pillars guide every word: compassionate, clear and uplifting.

For patients

Asking for help, made simple

Stage	What patients need	What we built
Awareness	To know help exists	SEO built around the phrases patients and caregivers actually search
Consideration	To know quickly if they qualify	One plain-language eligibility page and a clear promise of when they'll hear back
Conversion	To ask with confidence	One consolidated travel request form, broken into short screens with % complete, an instant "Request received" message, and a "What happens next" explainer

The main button became "Start Your Travel Request": friendly, active and focused on the trip.

For pilots

Pilots as part of the story

What pilots need	What we built
A home on the site	A dedicated pilot section with requirements and mission types in one place
A way to raise their own funds	The Pilot Fuel Fund, where every pilot has a "Fund Their Fuel" link supporters can give through
A way to show they fly	A new pilot swag store

For donors

Every gift, made tangible

What donors need	What we built
To know why it matters	A history page that traces one borrowed plane to 400,000+ trips
To know what a gift does	Giving amounts tied to real outcomes
A way to give that fits	Monthly and one-time giving, a Corporate Leadership Circle and an events page

Every gift has a job: $25 makes ground transportation accessible to families, $50 puts gas cards in the hands of families, $100 places a one-way commercial flight within reach, $200 supports private pilot assistance

Every Mile Matters When Fighting for Tomorrow

The structure

A clear path for every visitor

The navigation is organized by audience: For Patients, For Professionals, For Pilots, Ways to Give and About. Request Travel and Donate are always in reach.

Built to grow

A site the team runs on its own

Reusable blocks, a CMS for resources, accessibility basics written for Webflow, Claude and a training guide keep the site current without a developer.

The result

More people finding help, YoY

Comparing January 15 to November 6, 2026 with the same window in 2025:

Metric	2025	2026	Change
Users	67,124	122,839	+83%
New users	64,155	122,675	+91%
Returning users	10,532	17,129	+63%
Sessions	104,638	183,200	+75%
Engaged sessions	46,494	84,738	+82%

Organic search sessions grew from 26,262 to 56,391. The new patient pages became some of the most visited on the site: 40,472 views for ground transportation and 28,230 for eligibility. The travel request flow is now a top destination, and the site recorded 301 online donations totaling $19,078 in 2026.