The Client
Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust, founded by volunteers in 1997, is keen to bolster the number of members, volunteers, event attendees and trustees. They are particularly keen to encourage younger people to get involved with their organisation. In addition, they want to increase donations and sponsorship of research projects. These research projects help to protect our county’s parks and gardens.
The board identified that a website redesign would be essential for attracting interest, building awareness and encouraging supporters. They approached a number of local web design companies for a quote and Framework Digital made the cut.
Project Brief
Like many organisations, Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust has evolved continuously since it was founded. The current website is full of content; both current and historic. Every document has value to the organisation and to specific groups of people. Having said this, the scale of content was impeding navigation and our challenge was to resolve this.
The aim was for a clean, fresh design that would resonate with visitors. The team recognised that the process of planning for the website development would involve them making collective decisions about what content their website visitors really wanted. Such decisions have resulted in detailed discussions about what must stay and what is no longer relevant.
The organisation also required simple ways in which content could be regularly added. This had to be achieved without compromising the intuitive navigation.
In addition, there was an issue with Google Maps. It currently showed the property of one of the Board and they wanted this to be changed. An overly complex set up of emails also needed attention.
Our Solution
Framework Digital began the process of redesigning the Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust website by clarifying the logo and branding. The new design would be used on the website, newsletters, research reports and membership forms. The aim is to give consistency to all marketing.
We worked with a core team to agree on what content had to be included in the main menu. We explored a range of options on how other information could be accessible, such as links in the footer and a ‘members-only’ section. Some were embraced, whilst others were ruled out. We have only presented ideas which will be straightforward for the organisation to manage and update.
Our website design included categorisation options. This would help organise all new articles and information that would be posted and act as a filter for visitors. We also added breadcrumbs to each sub-page. This would help visitors identify where they were and to make it easier to get back to previous pages.
Clear call to actions were added to every page to encourage the desired outcomes. Our aim was to set these up in such a way as to reduce manual processes, therefore reducing the work currently being undertaken by the team.
We were able to resolve the Google Maps and email issues.
The Results
We arranged a planning meeting, in which our preliminary vision for the website was shared. Following this, we received this feedback:
“Thank you so very much for presenting the initial draft of the new Bucks Gardens Trust website today; it is excellent, clear and will be easy to navigate. Thank you for all the thought you have given, and are giving, to its design and construction.”
Rosemary, Bucks Garden Trust
You can visit Bucks Garden Trust by clicking the link below.
https://bucksgardenstrust.org.uk/
