By Ashley Dugan, CMP Staff Writer
The Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) is excited to announce a new layout for its website, set to officially launch Sept. 28, 2024!
The fresh design includes a reorganization of site menus to simplify navigation, an appealing blue color scheme and other elements to enhance user experience. All text in red is highlighting an action or link to click. The film strip on the home page displays several thumbnail photos which allows users to click and find the featured information.
The home page will also feature links to CMP’s Online Journal, The First Shot, and CMP’s Junior Magazine, On the Mark. Links to return to the top of the page have been added and the search engine has been optimized for more relevant results. Additional features on the home page are Upcoming events, Sales items, Auction items and e-Store items and includes links for additional information. CMP Ranges and Forums links are also available from the home page now.
“The old website was launched in February 2020 and we felt it was time for a new design,” said Christine Elder, CMP Communications Manager. “Numerous customers and competitors have pointed out that our website lacks user-friendliness, so we are diligently working to enhance its usability.”
“We have close to 300 web pages with A LOT of information,” Elder said. “CMP has grown over the years, adding many new programs, sales items, shooting disciplines…it’s a challenge to organize it. We hope the changes in Phase One of the new site helps our users get to the information they are looking for.”
The new site includes five dropdown menus which expand for more options. The menus are not so overwhelming when you mouse over them. There will also be a Site Map available from the home page and will categorize items in each menu option.
The search function has also had improvements and CMP plans to continue to improve our websites. “We have many ideas to improve the Club Search Function, Registration Function and Searching for Matches. It will take time but we are dedicated to making improvements.” Elder said.
Will Dantzler, CMP Chief Information Technology Officer, expressed his excitement in stating “We are pleased to launch this first phase of our website refresh by leveraging the latest website development tools to offer features to improve the CMP community experience across the broad range of products, programs, and services CMP offers.”
We look forward to feedback from our customers and competitors on what they are struggling to find on our website, so we can improve. Please send any suggestions or comments to celder@thecmp.org.
Note: The CMP website, www.TheCMP.org, will be offline for maintenance on Friday night, September 27, 2024 from 11:00 PM EDT to 1:00 AM EDT.
The Civilian Marksmanship Program is a federally chartered 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation. It is dedicated to firearm safety and marksmanship training and to the promotion of marksmanship competition for citizens of the United States. For more information about the CMP and its programs, log onto www.TheCMP.org.