New website for the Armed Forces charity – delivering an exceptional user-led digital experience for service users and supporters
Putting the users needs first
Increasing support and engaging the public
We partnered with SSAFA – The Armed Forces Charity – to design and develop a brand new website that puts multiple user needs at the heart, whilst helping them to meet their organisational objectives to:
- Improve access to their services including local branches
- Increase support ranging from donations to event and volunteer sign ups
- Engage the general public with the breadth of their work and offers
- Introduce a powerful CMS that will allow them to continue to build on and improve the site over time
Clarity and simplicity
Focusing on user needs and motivations
Making it easy for users to find the information or service they need was key to the success of the new website. We undertook a range of activities including reviewing existing user research and analysis to identify pain points and opportunities, alongside stakeholder interviews, user flow mapping, re-categorisation of support services, prototyping and testing user journeys.
From this we developed a new goal orientated IA for the site that provides clarity for users through improved navigation, condensed copy and clear signposting, calls to action and intuitive next steps based on the users needs and motivations.
Bringing local branches closer
A highly commended approach
SSAFA’s local branches are independent and run by volunteers so we needed to present them on the website in a way that’s efficient for the branches to keep updated whilst remaining useful and engaging for the users.
We created pages that are post code searchable, dynamically updated by centralised news and social media content whilst automatically surfacing relevant local volunteering opportunities, whilst allowing branches to include further localised content should they want to.
Our approach to this has been highly commended in the sector, as can be seen in this article from Charity Digital News.
Increasing income
Next generation donation experience
The site plays a key role in helping SSAFA to drive crucial income, we implemented a next generation donation experience using our platform goDonate to maximise donations cross devices and payment methods including Apple Pay & Google Pay.
We created a user friendly challenge events journey that allows users to easily find what they are looking for, with a straight forward registration and payment process.
A fresh look and feel
Slick, modern, and user friendly
The initial visual and user interface design task was to interpret SSAFAs exciting new brand and, coupled with the improved user experience, bring the new website to life. This was an interactive process that began from the outset at the pitch, continued through the prototyping stage, and finished with the final website design.
Along the way, we explored a range of creative treatments across mobile, tablet, and desktop, and also considered a range of interactions and animations to ensure that the site felt slick, modern but most importantly of all, user friendly.
The team are immensely proud of the finished results, and we were able to ensure a smooth transition from UX, to design, and into development through a collaboration approach, not only internally but also with the client – who we shared designs with and got feedback from on a regular basis throughout.
The results so far
We’ve brought the vital work of SSAFA alive through a visually engaging website with clear goal orientated user journeys for those accessing help and looking to support.
- Page views have increased by 30%
- 32% more unique users
- Number of donations has increased by 13%
- 77% more people going to the fundraising events pages
- 84% increase in volunteering applications
- Delivered on time and in budget!
We continue to work with SSAFA to review and optimise the website, provide digital marketing support and to introduce new features that drive their objectives forward.