Assess

We sat down with Challenge Works after their recent rebrand. They’d created new brand guidelines to distinguish themselves from their parent company, NESTA. The next step: a total website overhaul.

Their digital world is complex. They have a main site which is a hub for driving business, sharing news and highlighting recent work. They also have individual websites for each prize they run.

With each new prize, a new website is launched. They wanted a system to create new websites swiftly and easily, all by themselves. It had to be versatile, allowing them to independently create things like campaign pages, articles, and surveys.

Challenge Works wanted their own standout look. Unique, eye-catching, all theirs. Next up was website speed. Quick loading was a must for smooth and engaging browsing, as was a light load for international audiences and areas with slower internet speeds and coverage. Finally, they wanted to enhance security to create a safe and trusted user journey.

Plan

We outlined the new site so that pages can be built with modular reusable blocks. The first step was to create wireframes. Wireframing is like creating an inventory blueprint for each area, showing what things will go in an area – like text, images and buttons. It helped Challenge Works understand how their pages should be structured and how to organise categories and tags. These are labels you can apply to a blog post to help users find related content.

Once the structural blueprint was in place, we moved to visuals. With their brand guidelines as our compass, we explored colour palettes and typography. This guided our design journey. We played “Hot or Not” with design inspirations from other sites. This input helped us create vision boards, reflecting possible design directions.

We then discussed future-proofing the website. Because we’re in for the long run, this wasn’t going to be a done-and-run exercise. Challenge Works deals with global innovators, some in remote spots. They’ll likely need multi-language sites soon. We investigated tools for easy future language additions. Anticipating the need for online surveys and questionnaires too, we explored suitable tools, focusing on scalability for their expanding needs.

Execute

Putting our plan into action, we created visual design templates for crucial pages and content spots. Website design for a social enterprise requires it all – from call-to-action buttons to contact forms. We added features like a related news section at the end of each page, to tempt visitors to stay longer and explore more.

We prioritised smooth admin work to lessen Challenge Works’ team workload too. Like building a handy feature that allows copying and pasting components between pages with just a click. Anything we could automate to make things easier; we made it happen.

Data migration

As we moved Challenge Work’s old content to the new site, we made sure the team could easily handle it. We gave them an intuitive content management system (CMS)—think of it as the ‘Mission Control’ for their website. They can add, edit, or delete content without touching any complex code. The CMS also includes security tools. Driving ongoing protection for Challenge Works’ content and users.  

The devil lies in the details: the content also kept its search engine optimisation (SEO) value. We did this by preserving URL structures (basically, the web page addresses stayed organised the same way), and by registering redirects (so if someone clicked on an old link, they’d get whisked away to the right new page). 

Maintain

We didn’t just launch the website and then sprint off into the sunset. We stuck around, making sure everything is running smoothly and the site is in top form. 

We’re doing more than just fix problems. We provide proactive advice, video tutorials, user guides, and training sessions. With these tools in hand, they can sail through onboarding new team members and get them up to speed with the new system. 

We contribute strategically too. Focusing on adapting Challenge Works’ ideas into actionable web features. There’s a dynamic back-and-forth as we bring their visions to life. We help them meet their digital objectives in this ongoing relationship.  

Challenge Works now has a site that’s a breeze to handle. They can whip up new pages for fresh prizes, no need for our help. It’s fast and flexible, perfect for catching new business opportunities on the fly.

Speaking to our partnership, Challenge Works shared: “The salsa to our nachos—since the grand redesign, we’ve seen a supercharged 400% improvement in page loading speeds.”

Let’s work together. Get in touch.