Navigation Menu Naming — 'Success Stories' and 'Events and Programs'

Overview

During the VCEDC pre-launch review meeting (Dec 2, 2025), two navigation menu items were renamed to improve clarity and correctness ahead of the December 15 launch. The changes are minor but reflect a broader principle: nav labels should be immediately legible to a general audience, not just to the organization's internal vocabulary.

The Changes

'Business Success' → 'Success Stories'

The original label "Business Success" was flagged as ambiguous — it wasn't immediately clear to a first-time visitor what the section contained. The team considered several alternatives:

• Business Successes — grammatically awkward as a plural
• Business Success Stories — accurate but long
• Testimonials — too generic
• Success Stories — chosen as the clearest, most layman-friendly option

The item remains a dropdown with sub-pages including Spotlight and Business of the Year. The top-level label "Success Stories" works as an umbrella without conflicting with the sub-page titles.

"In layman's terms, that's what I would say — I want to see who they've helped." — Kathy Schmitz

'Events and Program' → 'Events and Programs'

A straightforward pluralization fix. The singular "Program" was a typo/oversight; the corrected label is "Events and Programs".

Decision Rationale

• Nav labels should describe what a visitor will find, not what the organization calls it internally
• Shorter is better, but not at the cost of clarity
• Labels can be updated post-launch without significant effort, so the team agreed to ship with "Success Stories" and revisit if needed

Implementation Notes

• Both changes were assigned to the developer (Lucas) as part of the pre-launch change batch
• The dropdown structure under "Success Stories" was preserved as-is
• These are cosmetic/copy changes only — no URL or page structure changes required

Related

• ^[1]
• ^[2]
• ^[3]