Charity improves access to information with Sitecore

The charity’s website is a vital tool, enabling people to access accurate information and timely support via a digital hub. It also has an important role in promoting and enabling volunteering, raising income, and supporting policy campaigns.

The charity’s legacy digital ecosystem, however, didn’t offer the quality of experience that it wanted for its users. Fragmented technologies and disparate data led to confusing user journeys, high operating costs, and difficulties managing information.

To meet its users’ needs, the charity wanted to create a platform that would replicate the in-person experience digitally, with content journeys that provide the most relevant information and clear next steps. It also wanted to improve links to direct services, including the helpline, online chat, and the charity’s online community.

To address these issues, the organization embarked on a digital transformation program that would put the user at the heart of its platform and processes.

With the website content now managed via Sitecore solutions, the charity can ensure that every visitor is presented with relevant and engaging content throughout their journey.

Processes have been streamlined to maximize efficiency and employee productivity, including halving digital production time. For example, the organization was able to rapidly launch a COVID-19 information hub by using Sitecore to publish and develop content. The site has been viewed by more than 400,000 users since its launch.

With its new digital ecosystem, the charity has also:

• Reduced bounce rates by 30%
• Doubled the average number of pages read by visitors
• Increased referrals to direct services tenfold
• Grown referrals to its online community from a few dozen to thousands per calendar month
• Achieved a consistent 4.5/5 score from site surveys for quality of information

These improvements all mean that patients, those supporting them, and healthcare professionals can access the information they need faster and more easily.

The charity launched its digital transformation program in late 2018, in partnership with IT consultant Endava. The project involved rolling out Sitecore Digital Experience Platform (XP), Experience Accelerator (SXA), and Experience Database (xDB), with a Sitecore Managed Cloud deployment on Microsoft Azure.

The new website provides patients, their supporters, and healthcare professionals with better access to information relevant to their needs.

These different audiences are managed using Sitecore’s SXA multisite feature, which simplifies the information architecture and enables audience-specific content to be linked across sites, resulting in a better user experience for content editors as well as website visitors.

As well as making it easier for users to access online and offline support from the charity’s specialist advisors and community group, the new site offers the option to create a profile to receive personalized content, with thousands of users already registered.