Image Credit : Tess French
Project Overview
Cancer Council is the nation’s leading cancer charity, and the only Australian charity working across every aspect of every cancer – from research to prevention and support. The national office, Cancer Council Australia (CCA), had not updated its website since 2012. As a result, its presentation, content and structure were outdated and in need of a major overhaul. With an ageing CMS, security, stability and ease of maintenance had also become problematic. Rather than attempting to conduct a ‘bandaid fix’ of the existing site, CCA decided to start afresh, switching platforms and completely rebuilding the site.
With a focus on future-proofing and scalability, CCA chose to build the site using headless CMS Kentico Kontent. This would provide the scope to expand content beyond the web and leverage new technology as it emerges. It also provides an ideal platform to serve common, national content with local information for states/territories as required, with the integration of the Cancer Council Northern Territory site included with the initial launch.
While the project was predominantly driven and implemented in-house, CCA engaged digital agency Luminary in an advisory capacity, to guide and support its internal team. Luminary augmented the CCA website team with specialist services around agile consultancy, UX and design, front end development, DevOps, QA and Kentico Kontent.
The project resulted in an extremely user-friendly, fast and robust website, built according to agency best practices but with CCA having all the in-house knowledge and expertise to continue to maintain and enhance it on an ongoing basis.
Organisation
Team
Product Owner: Doug Hussey (CCA)
Project Management: Daniela Stoecher (CCA); Jase Watson (Luminary)
UX & UI Design: Chloe Condie (CCA); Tess French (Luminary)
Front End: Benoit Morana (CCA); Drew Foster, Sarah Dam (Luminary)
Back End: Benoit Morana, Vikas Kulkarni (CCA); Andy Thompson (Luminary)
Content: Jane Roy, Jo Pham, Susan Thye (CCA)
SEO: Jo Pham (CCA); Jason Mun, Seb Griffiths (Overdose Digital)
DevOps: Benoit Morana (CCA); Andrew Radburnd (Luminary)
QA: Abraham Yuwono, Neil Sudharmono (Luminary)
Project Brief
The initial stage of the project was around platform selection. CCA was looking for a platform that would be stable, secure, and able to meet future scalability requirements. It also wanted something that would be easy for its internal team to maintain, and would be able to adapt to future developments in technology. In essence, CCA wanted to lay the foundations for a whole new digital ecosystem for itself and its members.
Once the platform selection stage of the project was complete, the focus shifted towards improving the user experience of the site – modernising the look and feel, information architecture, and content.
Project Need
As the nation’s leading source of cancer information and support, the CCA website serves a critical public need. The ability to find required information that is evidence based from a credible source can quite literally be a matter of life or death for a site user.
As such, it is vital that the site’s information be accessible, up-to-date and presented in the most appropriate format. Given the age of the existing site, a vast amount of content had become outdated, duplicated and/or buried away in information silos. The IA no longer represented best practices and information had become difficult for visitors to find.
Compounding these issues was the fact that the existing platform had become unstable and subject to malware attacks, so it was very hard for the CCA team to update and maintain.
User Experience
The process of refining the user experience began with a comprehensive content audit. The focus was on consolidating information and eliminating duplication wherever possible, as well as removing any redundant content. Planning for future content expansion was also undertaken.
The site’s IA was also reviewed using card sorting and tree testing. This led to the consolidation of information into five core sections: ‘Cancer Information’ and ‘Support and Services’ – targeted towards patients and carers; ‘Get Involved’ – aimed at donors and volunteers; a ‘Health Professionals section’; and About Us. The result was a vastly simplified structure that allows key audiences to quickly find the information they need.
The next step was to reimagine the look and feel of the site. For this, CCA drew heavily on a recent brand refresh, with some guidance from Luminary around translating the designs into the web context. In particular, Luminary advised on ways to utilise the brand’s yellow colour without compromising the site’s AA accessibility rating.
The new design also incorporates far more imagery, especially incorporating people’s faces to create a better emotional connection with visitors. Elements that betrayed the age of the site have given way to a far cleaner look, bringing content to the fore.
Reusable design elements ensure consistency throughout, which in turn engenders a sense of authority and trust (as well as making life a lot easier for CCA’s content administrators!).
Other UX improvements include more powerful on-site search capabilities (using Algolia) and seamless consistency in the functionality and aesthetics of the site across all devices.
Project Marketing
As the site has only recently been launched, project marketing to date has been focused on internal stakeholders. In terms of public facing announcements of the launch, there is an on-site pop-up alerting returning visitors who have not yet been to the new site that things have changed. A more externally focused marketing campaign – incorporating social media, consumer groups and leveraging existing relationships – will be implemented in due course.
Project Privacy
Cancer Council Australia manages any personal information in a transparent and open manner in accordance with applicable laws on data privacy protection and data security, in particular the Australian Privacy Principles. More information on the organisation’s privacy policy can be found here: https://www.cancer.org.au/privacy-policy
Tags
Digital - Health
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