What challenges were overcome for Volunteering WA?
With a vast audience reliant on Volunteering WA to provide opportunities, the next iteration of the website had to solve problems in the here and now, while offering up solutions that would allow the site to evolve over time.
Logical Navigation
Content and layout built for our two distinct user groups - volunteers and the sector; rather than by which internal team published the work.
Wordpress Flexibility
Removed reliance on custom CMS sites, which required significant code re-writes and lengthier turnarounds for functionality updates.
Accessibility & Design
A website built to meet WCAG accessibility standards, and present text-heavy information as attractive easy-read content blocks.
How did this new project allow you to build on your good?
There are already so many activities competing for a person’s time, and we only have a short window to sell someone on adding volunteering into that once they land on our website.
The planning and design phases of Dux’ website build allowed us to take a step back and really look at what we were trying to achieve with our website, who our core users groups were, what they needed from our website, and to ultimately build a website that was logical for them to navigate, rather than a site built on our internal assumptions.
Volunteering is incredibly personal, and our new website templates prioritise mobile-responsive photos, video, quotes, and story blocks which were missing from our old text-heavy site.
What has your team found by way of benefits and efficiencies since taking on the new website?
The key wins thus far, have been:
- Easier and quicker content updates and publishing, thanks to the simplicity of how Dux has designed the back end for us.
- With a handful of core content blocks we can quickly create pages that look different to the next, whilst still having overall brand consistency.
- Improved SEO to help more people discover volunteering experiences, statistics, and resources.
- Simple and transparent quoting for new ideas and functionality updates.
- Volunteers and managers can quickly see what (and where) information is on the site, with the Menu dropdowns.
- Inadvertently helped Volunteering WA identify gaps in our services, because we reviewed what our users actually needed before building the site.
- The site search is incredibly effective allowing users to find pages with keyword searches.
How has this helped your Users engage with you?
The new website helps us service and support our two very different user groups in one place, whilst helping each still feel like the site is for them.
Whether a person is trying to find and apply for volunteering experiences; or they’re a volunteer manager who wants to find articles on volunteer insurances and governance; or a policy-maker searching for the latest volunteering statistics, they can now navigate a site that’s built for them.
Testimonial - Holly Hazel
Working with Dux gave us a clean slate to build a site from scratch, and tap into their experience of what makes a website work. If you’re a not-for-profit you know that project timelines can get pushed out, and easily reprioritised, but Dux’s transparent timeline helped us stay on track (mostly), whilst still being realistic. Other than ending up with a site that we’re incredibly proud of, the Dux team are just a great bunch of people who genuinely care about helping us do better. Thanks team!
Testimonial - Barry Marelli
From the very first meeting, we knew that teaming up with Holly would lead to a brilliant outcome. This was a project that progressed at a great pace, lots of robust conversations and an outcome that both teams were incredibly proud of. A chance to modernise the website, improve IA and provide a cleaner path to volunteering, is a great set of results.
Talk to us Looking to do good, better?
Does your “good” mean more enrolments, or bookings, or donations? Time for a new website? Support with marketing ideas? Better fundraising outcomes? Or you just want to meet up for a coffee to talk things through? If so, we’d love to hear from you.