The Children's Society is a leading national charity, driven by the belief that every child deserves a good childhood. We came on board in August 2007 to redesign the site and couldn't quite believe that the in house team managed to migrate over 3,000 pages of content into the new CMS in no time at all to go live in November!
There were many good things abot the previous incarnation of The Children's Society website, but it didn't quite communicate to the charity's diverse online audiences and, whilst the branding was strong, the design was more applicable to a print publication than an online communication channel.
We began the redesign project with a full usability review of the site. This identified a number of flaws in the navigation structure and the layout of key pages in the site. The next step was to understand the site's objectives first hand from the point of view of 15 key internal stakeholder groups and to identify exactly who their target audiences were.
These inputs, plus a full content audit and workshop-based card sorting exercise, gave the 9web team the raw materials to resturucture the information architecture of the site, working in close collaboration with the project team to address all aspects of the organisation and to meet all user goals.
Once the structure of the site had been defined, the design team went to work to update the look and feel of the site and to introduce innovate features to help streamline the user journey.
As well as the corporate site, we designed "Kids zone" with a child friendly look and feel that was developed with the help of a small group of children and young people at The Children's Society Genesis project in Greenwich.
The final designs were then taken into production with a final deliverable of standards compliant, search engine friendly, fully accessible templates for implementation on to the CMS.
A rapid deployment of the Rhythmyx CMS and end user training by Unified Solutions then followed, before the in house team migrated a huge amount of content in the blink of an eye to get the site live on time. Well done team!
Lisa Quinlan-Rahman - Senior New Media Manager, The Children's SocietyOur new look website aims to provide content in an engaging and relevant way for our diverse online audiences. The team at 9web added tremendous value to the project, working in partnership with internal and implementation teams to deliver beyond expectation.
During an expertly led, and collaborative usability review and information design processes, 9web went to great lengths to understand our unique challenges. Their expertise was invaluable when incorporating the requirements of individual business areas and subsequently communicating the overall vision to the organisation.
9web brought an attention to detail and can-do attitude and delivered a new site design that is accessible, fresh and modern and works with a revised structure to make it easier to communicate our key messages and for users to find what they need and get involved with The Children's Society.
9web have also worked with us to develop a complimentary child-friendly look for content aimed at this segment of our audience which has been well received.
We have formed a close working relationship with the team at The Children's Society and are delighted to now be on their list of preferred suppliers. We are currently in conversation about various microsites and a potential redesign of their intranet - watch this space.
