Halifax Opportunities Trust Website

Web Design and Maintenance

About Halifax Opportunities Trust

Halifax Opportunities Trust (HOT) are a community-based registered charity who have been working to make vibrant, multi-cultural and self-sustaining communities across Calderdale for over 20 years.

Based in Halifax in the borough of Calderdale, West Yorkshire, HOT work with communities in many different forms across a wide variety of projects. They focus their services and projects in six key areas – Enterprise, Learning, Community & Wellbeing, Employment, Inclusive Integration, and Children & Families – and serve a wide range of community needs. HOT are opportunity-makers and community-builders. They bring communities together and help local people overcome barriers to achieve the life they deserve.

What They Asked For

HOT wanted to work with web designers and developers to create a new website for the Trust. Their main objective for the project was to bring more people closer to them and support their core audiences with an improved website – accessible, interactive, and optimised to reach and serve their core audiences. As the Trust grows and gains a position as an anchor in the community, HOT believed it was increasingly important to articulate and showcase the charity’s work and the people they serve more effectively and succinctly. The key project objective was to build a better website for the Trust, to improve accessibility and enhance the user experience for the site visitors.

The Trust believed that their existing website was outdated. The Content Management System was not intuitive, making it difficult to update the website and add new content. The existing site was not aligned with HOT’s brand characteristics and the Trust believed the site did not clearly address its audience and was insufficiently accessible for core audiences. Feedback from existing users highlighted difficulties finding relevant information, trouble navigating the site, and reported poor user experiences when accessing the site on mobile devices. The new website is intended to support HOT’s core audiences – service users and funders/partners – with customer journeys that explicitly support and guide them to relevant, signposted information about how the Trust can serve them.

In the website brief documentation, HOT have included functionality, features, and user experience specifications for the site. This included clear navigation for the core services and delivery areas, interactive and dynamic elements that engage the visitor and signpost content, and a search bar feature that helps users easily find information. HOT wanted the website to clearly communicate and display the Trust’s multifaceted and holistic approach to working with the local community and seeking funding partners. They expressed that the new site should implement strong branding and simplify their core message so that it more directly addresses their core audiences.

The Trust wanted the new site to become a valuable resource that serves visitors more effectively and that generates more return visitors. The new site should deliver improved user experience and enhanced customer journeys so that visitors can more easily find and navigate information relevant and helpful to them. As more than half of the website visitors access the site through mobile, the new website must also be fully responsive and optimised for mobile devices. HOT also want the new website to optimise and digitalise their recruitment process, refining and streamlining the recruitment experience to attract higher quality applications.

Web Design and Maintenance

What We Did

We designed and developed a new website for the Trust that incorporated all the features and functionalities that HOT requested in the design brief. We worked closely with HOT’s marketing team throughout the project to ensure the website design was optimised to achieve the Trust’s objectives as outlined in the brief. We began the process by outlining and finalising a wireframe for the site. We planned and illustrated the website content and outlined and arranged the intended site navigation. We then moved on to the design stage, using the wireframe as a guide to help design and layout individual pages and custom posts. The wireframe allowed us to view the website as a whole and helped us ensure the pages, posts and sub-sections showed consistency and worked well together.

We reviewed HOT’s website research and new site comments and requests and evaluated the feedback from users to ensure our design succeeded in resolving all problems identified. We closely studied HOT’s brand guidelines to ensure we understood how to implement their brand identity effectively, including the HOT sub-brands and their respective brand elements and colours. We applied strong and consistent branding throughout the design. Ensuring all content clearly presented HOT’s value proposition, our designs expressed their core values and features with engaging graphics, unique icon designs, and images consistent with HOT’s brand style.

Our design featured a simple, user-friendly navigation system and clear signposting, with calls to action that guide visitors through the Trust’s core services and delivery areas. We created user experiences designed to meet the needs of HOT’s core audiences, and customer journeys that will lead to the website generating more return visitors. We developed user personas based on HOT’s core audiences and their needs and used these personas to help design and test optimised customer journeys for service users, partners and funders, recruitment candidates, and other target audiences. We developed these measures to resolve common user experience issues, including accessibility issues and difficulties navigating the site and finding information.

The site features interactive and dynamic elements and animated branded elements designed to keep the viewer engaged. We also included an accessible news and events feature and a search bar feature on the homepage that allows visitors to search and find information quickly and easily. We understood it was important for site to be optimised for mobile to ensure maximum accessibility and ease to use. We developed the design for desktop and mobile simultaneously on the wireframe so that we could refine any areas where the design needed to be adapted or redeveloped for mobile.

The website is designed to be responsive on all devices and screen sizes. Our designers worked methodically to ensure we delivered on all content, functionality, features, and user experience specifications as outlined in the design brief.

Halifax Opportunities Trust Website - Website design for Halifax Charity

Halifax Opportunities Trust Website

Delivery/Results

Throughout the project, we followed HOT’s detailed brand guidelines closely. We carefully applied HOT’s brand colours, fonts, shapes, and followed their logo and image usage guidelines and sub-brand guidelines all through the design process.

In summary, we created a new website design that supports and reflected HOT’s brand values and supports HOT in achieving their stated goals. At every stage of the design process, we were committed to honouring HOT’s brand identity guidelines while also striving to enhance the brand by developing additional digital assets and animation effects. We created unique layouts to avoid long-form scrolling and to break up the structure to create more engaging sections.

The website is accessible, interactive, and engaging, and provides positive user experiences consistently, supporting visitors to find what they are looking for easily and encouraging them to revisit and see the site as a helpful resource that they can visit and use regularly.

Before

After

Web Maintenance

Once HOT’s website had gone live, web maintenance commenced. Our web maintenance service ensures that their website performance and security is optimised and allows them to make regular changes and updates to content. We conduct plugin updates, core updates and monitor plugin compatibility to reduce website downtime and prevent malicious attacks. We monitor plugin vulnerabilities, large scale attacks and manage updates to ensure compatibility and that the website never experiences fatal or critical errors or breaks in layout or design. We also provide 2 hours of design support each month to help the team with any struggles they may have when uploading new content or creating new pages.

Testimonial

“We worked with Grinning Graphics to design and develop a new website for the Trust. They carefully followed our design brief, implemented our brand really well throughout the site, and delivered a fantastic website that includes all requested features and functionalities. We’re really pleased with the results. Professional and easy to work with. Excellent communication throughout the project. Grinning Graphics have created a site that is accessible, responsive, and easy to navigate, and that aligns for our brand characteristics. We’re happy that the new website will help us support our core audiences and deliver better user experiences for our users.

We continue to work with Grinning Graphics as they are providing ongoing web maintenance support.”

Halifax Opportunities Trust

Katy Devereux - Marketing & Business Engagement Officer