The goal
Students Organising for Sustainability UK is a great charity that works with students on environmental and social justice, unfortunately up until recently their website looked dated. It was hard to navigate, and almost impossible to use on mobile - which is a huge problem when young people use mobile for so much of their internet browsing.
So we set out our plan to create an awesome website with three main goals:
- Present our vision
- Get people involved in our projects
- Get people to join our mailing list
The challenge
SOS-UK, being the amazing organisation it is, has a lot of projects. I mean a lot. We knew it was going to be a mammoth job to move years of content to a new website - so it was important the Content Management System (CMS) was easy to use.
The process
Like all of my projects, I started with a strategy workshop. I sat down (virtually) with the charity’s directors and we decided what we wanted to achieve on the website, how we were going to achieve it, and how we wanted it to look. Strategy is such an important stage in these projects - if we don’t get agreement on these things early the site will never satisfy anyone.
I worked with the SOS-UK team to put together a sitemap, creating a navigation system that actually made sense. I then turned this into a Wireframe on Figma, this allowed them to get involved in my process early on, adding comments and helping me figure out how each bit of content fits together. After our wireframe was complete we had the exciting job of designing the site - we chose a strong colour palette for brand recognition and a card system for interactive content. We also decided to have an email newsletter CTA in the top right corner, and a “Take Action” CTA for students in the first section of the homepage - working to achieve our goals from the beginning.
Next I turned our design into an actual website in Webflow, a brilliant tool for quick development. We used the Webflow CMS extensively, with many item collections for all kinds of content - from resource files to blogs. Once the site was complete, I put together training materials that allowed all staff members at SOS-UK to easily learn how to update and add content for the website without having to contact me. This works efficiently and effectively, and will mean the site won’t become so easily outdated.
Finally, I supported SOS-UK to launch their new site - transferring domains, updating SEO and testing for bugs.
The results
Joe completely redesigned SOS-UK's website, and we couldn't be happier with the outcome! Joe worked closely with key members of the team to define the strategy and scope out the content and appearance in a way that would enable SOS-UK to present ourselves to our key audiences in an accessible and appealing way. Alongside the website development, Joe also supported us to change our mailing contact database. In both cases, Joe identified platforms that would meet our needs, whilst being extremely user-friendly. As a back-up, Joe's suite of learning videos and resources enable all members of the team to update the website, ensuring our web presence stays current and we can continue to engage more students and organisations in our work.
Rachel Drayson, Head of research and impact at SOS-UK