Designing a simple and intuitive website based on Plain English Campaign principles for legal advice service Advicenow.
Introducing Advicenow
Advicenow is an independent, not-for-profit website providing accurate, up-to-date information on rights and legal issues. Advicenow was founded by the Advice Services Alliance, the coordinating body for independent advice services in the UK. We launched the newly designed website in April 2008.
The challenge
Over time, the Advicenow website had outgrown itself, with the design becoming tired and the navigation layout increasingly restrictive. The website needed a face-lift to improve the browsing experience and provide more routes into the content. The CMS was still sound, but Advicenow wanted the additional benefits provided by upgrading to OTHERobjects version 5.0.
What we did
We began by analysing Advicenow’s main audiences and auditing the large amount of content already on the site. This research fed into our homepage and landing page strategy, with popular content areas prioritised in the design and represented in the information architecture. The homepage creative is based on flexible modules, allowing the Advicenow team to promote different issues and campaigns as required.
Strong CMS principles underpin the design enabling the creation of user permissions, control of workflow, information syndication across sites and a powerful search capacity. OTHERobjects 5.0 goes further with additional functionality such as article commenting, surveys and social bookmarking increasing interactivity. The site is also developing, with new self-contained sections like ‘Is that Discrimination?’ being woven into its structure.
The results
The Advicenow site has received a Plain English Campaign Web Award. This award is presented annually to websites that use plain English and provide simple intuitive navigation paths to information. Winning sites are attractively designed but never at the expense of clarity. Advicenow also enjoys consistent visitor numbers and high engagement levels, with an average of three minutes spent on the site per visit.