NSPCC Website Redesign Targets Child Welfare
Our mission was simple; quickly turn the NSPCC’s main site into an effective place to learn about child cruelty, support change, raise money and ultimately end child abuse in the UK.
Our approach
Before we started thinking about the redesign we talked to the end users through a mix of online true intent surveys, providing breadth, and one to one usability testing, providing depth.
Our consultants also spent a great deal of time working with the internal stakeholders to ensure we understood the direction of the business as well as the needs of the customer.
Turning insight into action
From the research we were able to create a clear picture of how the new site should work, keeping in mind the fact that the CMS would not change and much of the site copy would be refreshed but not rewritten.
Our design work was split into two distinct streams, information architecture and brand design.
Rapid prototypes
The information architecture (IA) team started by creating a number of quick paper prototypes, that were quickly worked up to low fidelity wireframes prototypes; all of which were reviewed with key stakeholders on a regular basis.
Brand design
Once the IA had reached a mid-point our visual design team took on the task of refreshing the online brand, in line with the existing NSPCC guidelines. Much of their effort was put into de-cluttering the layout, providing simpler visual clues to key areas of interaction and creating standards across the site from links and photos to templates and navigation.
Prototype to production
The final design phase saw us develop a high fidelity (fully designed) prototype that was used for sign off by the client and as a template for our front end developers to create the code for the CMS.
Working closely with the NSPCC’s own tech team and a pair of freelance Rhythmix experts, we set to the challenging task of integrating a new look with an old site, from navigation and templates to forms and functions.
Amazing results that speak for themselves
Firstly and most importantly the new website, launched earlier this summer, has lead to an eight-fold rise in online reporting to its Helpline about suspected child abuse.
In the month since the new look NSPCC website launched on 28 May, the NSPCC Helpline dealt with 209 online reports from people worried about a child - up from a previous monthly average of 25.
NSPCC digital communications manager Stephanie Hughes said:
“A key objective of the NSPCC website refresh was to provide people with engaging content, and ensure they could find what they were looking for with fewer clicks.
“Making sure everyone could access the NSPCC Helpline, encourage them to seek help and advice and report suspected child abuse, was top of the list.
“To make the Helpline easily accessible to all audiences we’ve placed prominent ‘Report a concern’ links and Helpline promotional units in the right hand column throughout the site, plus an NSPCC Helpline hero banner on the homepage”.
Stephanie Hughes continued:
“It’s important that people feel confident about reporting abuse, and that they are doing the right thing by contacting the NSPCC Helpline. To provide this reassurance all the Helpline pages feature clear, concise copy about how the service works and what happens when you report a concern.
“Overall, we’ve completely reviewed the NSPCC website user journey, to meet our audience’s needs as much as our business priorities, and the site is now fit to support donations, volunteering and campaigning too. Another key factor was to optimise the copy to make sure people would find us when concerned about a child.”
We could not have wished for a better result from our work on this important project.
And the thanks go to…
We worked tirelessly to make the site redesign successful, but we alone can not take all of the praise, we must also highlight the efforts of our client, who helped keep the project on track over time, make sense and rewrite much of the content and be there when we needed them to review and sign off on the project.
Visit the NSPCC website now and help make a difference.
A full press release can be found on the NSPCC PR website
