WRVS delivers practical support to allow older people to get more out of life through its 5,000 services nationwide. Although the charity’s offline marketing strategy ensured it received volunteers, the average age was 60 and there were no regular contributors to donations.

The website did not appeal to any demographic; it was extremely corporate with static pages, few links and poor usability. People who wanted to volunteer went through a long drawn out process, and did not receive updates on their status progress.

WRVS wanted to provide a structure to its website, informing users of what the company does and how it works. It also wanted to focus on the two specific areas of volunteering and donating.

Through multiple workshops Creative Jar’s UX team developed wireframes to define the functionality of the new site. Content pages, such as a service search by postcode and step by step guides, were added. Each service had its own landing page and URL, so that it could be used in future marketing strategies.

The process of becoming a volunteer was still long (due to CRB checks) but the website accounted for this by drawing the would-be volunteer back to the site with volunteer opportunities, the ability to add fundraising events and the possibility to engage with social media.

Once a volunteer was a full-member they could enter a personalised area on the website, letting them interact with other volunteers and begin volunteering.

Extra donate call to actions were added, with the ability to link WRVS to Just-Giving and Facebook, and to encourage others to donate too.

Functionality such as an interactive fundraising events calendar, and the ability to create events and send e-invitations was also created.

Post UX development, user testing labs were held with typical service users. This process allowed us to test functionality and marry the needs of users with the proposed solution. The labs resulted in further enhancements and changes to the wireframes.

Working to WRVS brand guidelines, our creative team implemented a simple, yet stylish digital experience that worked well with the intended audience.

An enterprise Content Management System (CMS) was developed in Microsoft .NET, allowing website editors to update the website with ease. The CMS gives total control for WRVS, with user rights, SEO management, panel management, press, and many other features.