Designing a visually engaging, user-centred and intuitively organised website for national crime reduction charity, Nacro.
Introducing Nacro
Nacro reduces crime by changing lives. The charity works with the most disadvantaged people, offenders and those at risk of offending, to help them find positive alternatives to crime and to achieve their full potential in society.
The challenge
Nacro needed a bold and refreshing look and feel for their new site. The site had to be firmly rooted in user-centred design principles and based upon a detailed information architecture. Another major requirement was to efficiently fulfill the needs of Nacro’s diverse audience groups (including offenders, at risk young people, ex-offenders and their families) by taking them directly to relevant content and showing intuitive related links and promotions.
What we did
We began by running a set of workshops with the Nacro team that identified key objectives; necessary functionality and an extensive list of Nacro’s different audience types. This broad list of audiences was consolidated into five primary user personas that covered the needs and actions of the majority of users. A scenario was designed for each persona, based on their likely on-site actions. The scenarios fed into the user journeys that were used to test the intuitiveness of the emerging site structure and to identify cross-linking opportunities.
Once the site structure and prioritised list of requirements were agreed we began wireframing. Wireframes define each element of a page and describe how functional elements, such as the Services Search, work so that everyone on the project is working to the same specification. The new design is fresh, positive and welcoming; visually-led, it uses imagery to showcase the range of Nacro services. Landing pages were created for specific audiences (where it was necessary to keep messaging separate) but cross-linking enables a user to move easily through the whole site.
The results
The site has proven to be highly successful: with the number of visits topping 82,000 in the six weeks since launch. Minuche Mazumdar, Nacro’s Online Communications Manager, is extremely happy with the new site and so are staff around the country.
“Excellent stuff. Congratulations for making Nacro's website better than most out there - the improvement is immeasurable. Onwards and upwards. Well done all!" - Debbie John