Feedback Report on La Casa Norte’s Instagram Presence: An Assessment of Engagement Through Brand Presentation
Updated: 7 days ago
WRD 204: Technical Writing
Winter 2025
Role: Editorial Lead & Client-Facing Researcher
Executive Summary
Purpose
The purpose of this report was to evaluate and provide feedback on La Casa Norte’s Instagram presence, focusing on navigability, credibility, and engagement. We...
Procedure
Test five random students at DePaul University’s Brownstone’s Café, between the
ages of 18 and 28.
Upon completion of five tasks, prompt users to share their opinions on La Casa
Norte’s trustworthiness and their willingness to volunteer through a 10-point Likert Scale.
Results
La Casa Norte exhibits consistent visual theming across its Instagram page.
Users struggle to navigate from La Casa Norte's Instagram to the donation page.
Users struggle to locate key information (e.g., client testimonials, founder info) on La Casa Norte's Website.
Based solely on Instagram profile observations, test participants ranked La Case Norte’s trustworthiness as a nonprofit at a 7.4 out of 10 on average.
On average, test participants ranked their willingness to volunteer at a 3.1 out of 10.
Recommendations
Use the “pinned post” feature on Instagram to highlight ongoing initiatives.
Use the “pinned comments” feature on Instagram to link posts to the donation page.
Use the “story highlights” feature on Instagram to provide easy access to donation and volunteer information.
Post more client testimonies and information about the non-profit’s president/board.
Relocate the website’s donate button to the top of the page.
Obtain account verification (“verified badge”) to increase credibility.
Conclusion
While Instagram users consider La Casa Norte as a credible non-profit, volunteerism and
donation campaigns would benefit by employing more of Instagram’s built-in features.
Introduction
This usability test focused on measuring the ease of navigability of La Casa Norte’s Instagram page. This was done by allowing college students at DePaul University to traverse the nonprofit’s page and provide feedback. Our two primary objectives for testing La Casa Norte’s social media presence were to:
Determine how users perceived LCN's credibility based on their Instagram page
Determine user willingness of users volunteer or donate
We found that even though La Casa Norte’s social media page isn’t inherently difficult to navigate, integrating some key features into their Instagram page would make navigation more user-friendly, thus creating more opportunities for user engagement. Through our analysis, we hope to provide valuable feedback to La Casa Norte to help strengthen its social media presence and support its mission.
Procedures
We tested five random students at DePaul University’s Brownstone’s Café Lounge, with ages ranging from 18 to 28. Users were assigned five tasks. After completing each task, users were prompted with a question regarding La Casa Norte’s Instagram presence. These tasks included:
Skimming through La Casa Norte’s Instagram page and talking through initial impressions. Users were asked what stood out the most to them.
Navigating to La Casa Norte’s donation page from their Instagram profile.
Locating client testimonies from people that La Casa Norte has assisted in the past.
Locating two ongoing programs/initiatives that La Casa Norte offers.
Locating founders or leaders that would give a face to La Casa Norte’s image.The five tasks were then followed by two closing questions to evaluate navigation ease and overall user experience. These included:
Asking participants to rate the credibility of La Casa Norte’s Instagram presence on a 10-point Likert Scale.
Asking participants to rate the likelihood of them volunteering on a 10-point Likert Scale.
These tasks and questions helped users synthesize their thoughts on La Casa Norte’s Instagram profile and provide feedback on how to improve nonprofit engagement.
Results
During our testing procedures, users were asked simple questions about each task to generate discourse on the usability of La Casa Norte’s Instagram profile. These answers pertained to Instagram-to-website navigation, brand image, trustworthiness, and perceptions about La Casa Norte’s mission. Our results yielded user opinions on...
1. External Navigation & General Usability: Users encountered issues navigating to La Casa Norte’s donation page from their Instagram profile. Despite most users finding the donation page, all users agreed that the process was lengthy.
2. Initiative Awareness: There is limited information on volunteer opportunities. Users struggled to identify concrete volunteer opportunities beyond “Wishlist Wednesday”. A lack of visibility affected some users’ likelihood to engage in volunteerism efforts.
3. Mission Clarity: There is a clear but generalized mission perception. Although users understood La Casa Norte’s summative aim to help underrepresented individuals, some found the non-profit’s scope unclear.
4. Transparency: Based on their Instagram profile, users perceived La Casa Norte as trustworthy and transparent; some, however, wanted more visibility regarding the non-profit’s founders and leaders and how their backgrounds align with the mission.
The data we were able to gather from our usability test is beneficial to La Casa Norte, primarily because of its potential to guide changes that will mitigate the above issues. Some improvements can be made to their Instagram page that will increase user engagement.
Recommended Changes Based on Results
Users provided suggestions on how La Casa Norte could streamline its Instagram page’s usability to increase engagement.
Instagram’s Feature Integration: Many of our testers agreed that La Casa Norte is not using Instagram’s platform to its fullest potential, which was the crux of navigation confusion amongst users. Users suggested four different Instagram features that La Casa Norte should use:
Pinned Posts: La Casa Norte can use the “pin post” function to feature upcoming volunteerism events or donation initiatives at the top of their page, where they are easily accessible.
Pinned Comments: La Casa Norte can use the “pin comments” function on relevant donation-based Instagram posts to link users directly to their website’s donation page. This link can also be placed in the post’s caption.
Story Highlights: Much like the pinned post function, La Casa Norte can use the “story highlights” feature for ease of usability. Users suggested creating story highlights for volunteer opportunities and donation initiatives, which can include applicable links and record recent nonprofit activity.
Account Verification: Users suggest that La Casa Norte obtain verification for their Instagram profile (most commonly known as a blue checkmark), which will increase perceived credibility.
Testimonial-Based Content: Users want to see more client testimonials and information regarding La Casa Norte’s leaders as an initiative to increase transparency and connectivity.
These recommendations, if taken, would help solve issues regarding usability, awareness,
transparency and clarity to create a more accessible experience for Instagram users navigating La Casa Norte’s profile.
Conclusion
This usability test yielded insight into the strengths and weaknesses of La Casa Norte’s
Instagram profile. La Casa Norte’s Instagram depicts a strong brand image through the use of unique post styling, which in turn generates credibility amongst users. However, La Casa Norte’s lack of accessible donation links or volunteer opportunities has led to an unclear understanding of this nonprofit’s mission and methods of engagement. Users’ opinions on trustworthiness and engagement are reflected in the two 10-point Likert Scales we conducted. While La Casa Norte’s credibility rating soared at a 7.4, users’ likeliness of volunteering remained stagnant at a 3.1. While this data point was affected by external factors such as school workload, a majority of users lacked a clear understanding of volunteerism initiatives within La Casa Norte, which in turn dissuaded them from wanting to provide this nonprofit with their time.This can be remedied by creating more ease of access through the use of Instagram’s various “pin” and “highlight” features, which can be used to provide more focused understandings of what volunteers’ roles are as well as where users’ donation money is going. Doing so would increase engagement not only on a focal scale through Instagram profile interaction but also on a local level by raising interest in volunteerism. These changes would allow La Casa Norte to generate outreach not only across the internet but to the millions of users using Instagram looking to engage with the Chicago community.
Appendix
Testing Protocol:
Introduction: Hi, my name is Jose, and this is Allie. We are students here at DePaul. I was
wondering if you could spare 10 minutes for a quick usability testing session on a non-profit’s
Instagram page. A usability test is a way to evaluate how easy a product is to use. We’re not
testing you, we are testing the Instagram page itself.
Before we start, are you comfortable looking at a page on Instagram? Would you like to use your
phone, or are you more comfortable using our laptop?
Look up @lacasanorte. We’ll ask you to complete five tasks.
1. The first task is to skim through their Instagram and talk through it. Tell us what you
are thinking. (1 min)
a. What is the one thing that stood out to you the most?
2. For our second task, navigate to their website’s donation page from Instagram. (40 sec)
b. Do you think navigating to that page was easy enough?
i. Try clicking one of the links.
3. Skim through the Instagram page once more. Can you find any client testimonies or
quotes from people that La Casa Norte has helped in the past? (1 min)
c. If you found a client testimony, do you think this type of post is representative of their brand image?
4. Skim through the Instagram page. Our fourth task is to look for 2 programs that this non-profit offers. (60 sec)
d. Is it clear to you what this non-profit has to offer?
i. Try clicking one of their links.
5. Finally, from their Instagram page, can you find who the founder is? (40 sec)
e. Would you be more comfortable knowing who their leaders are?
i. Try clicking on their bio description.
Final Questions:
1. On a scale from 1 -10. How trustworthy does this organization feel?
2. If you did care? How likely are you to volunteer
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