The VSI Alliance is a local partnership between six organisations (four voluntary & community sector support organisations and two public sector bodies working together) committed to ensuring the Calderdale Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprise sector (VCSE) is represented, supported, and celebrated.
VSI Alliance support organisations with all the formalities of running an organisation. They reassure and answer questions, demystify jargon and technical terms, and offer support, resources, and guidance. Nearly all their services are free to use. They provide access to an expert team in different areas of running and growing a VCSE organisation.
Some of the tailored support the VSI has delivered throughout Calderdale includes safeguarding support, funding and income generation, volunteer matching and development, business development, and much more.
The VSI Alliance is a partnership between VAC, Quality 4 Health, Locality, North Bank Forum, Calderdale Council, West Yorkshire Accountancy Service, and NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board.
In our initial discussion with the VSI Alliance team, they explained that the felt their online brand identity was underdeveloped and mismatched. The explained that it has been pieced together gradually by team members over a number of years. They did not have an overarching strategy, and did not implement their brand consistency throughout their website. They felt this made them look amateurish and unprofessional. To be seen as trustworthy and the great resource that they are, they needed a website that truly reflected their message and their mission.
Their website was built using Drupal CMS. They were dissatisfied with the platform and wanted to start the new website from scratch and move everything over to WordPress CMS. The team wanted web designers who would not only build a new site but move their website over to WordPress and set up the new pages, blog functionality, custom posts with dynamic colours and templates. They wanted a more cohesive, modern and consistent brand identity with additional brand elements to create a more engaging website and a much more positive and enjoyable user experience.
VSI were also unhappy with their existing hosting provider and wanted the new website to be hosted with us.
We ensured the VSI Alliance team had backed up their existing site and made copies of their content and blogs. We then set up VSI Alliance on our servers and installed the latest version of WordPress ready to be populated with VSI content. Their Drupal site remained live for a short period so that the team could rewrite some of the content. During this time, we set up a staging site and put together a selection of page designs with strong brand styles, and we shared them with the team for their feedback.
The VSI team selected the design style that they felt reflected the look and style they were looking for, and approved these designs for the entire site. We created a brand-pattern that we used to decorate some of the page backgrounds, employing their existing colour palette to create hints of colour and style across the website. We also developed a series of fun and engaging illustrations in the VSI brand style and colours that we used on call to action sections and pages. We thought they added something more interesting and exciting for the user experience, while reenforcing and strengthening the overall brand and providing more brand consistency.
We examined the existing VSI website content, and reviewed their sitemap to look for ways to create a smoother, frictionless navigation for the user. The layout of the existing site was uninspiring and often used plain one column or two column layouts with no emphasis and very few images or variation in styles. We developed more creative layouts on each page and in page-sections to create a more engaging experience for the user.
The website was responsively designed, optimised for mobile and desktop, and responsive on all devices and screen sizes. The website design was also informed by WCAG 2.2 web accessibility guidelines to ensure the website design would be inclusive and compatible with the latest accessibility guidelines.
To summarise, we set up the VSI Alliance’s new website on our web hosting servers and installed WordPress CMS to allow for a brand new look, feel and performance for the new website. We created a suite of engaging new brand assets that we used throughout the new site to enhance and strengthen VSI’s brand identity and create a more engaging user experience for visitors and users. This new style is on-brand and reflects the message and mission VSI Alliance want to portray to their VCSE audience.
Using WordPress for their new website allows the VSI team to make changes to the website more easily than they could on the Drupal CMS. We facilitated this by creating templates and installed easy-to-use page builders so that the VSI team could easily add new content and develop the site even further as they expand.
At every stage of the design and development process, we stayed on-message and adhered to VSI Alliance’s existing brand colours when creating new brand assets. We were committed to honouring the support and resources the VSI provide to the VCSE sector. Throughout the design and build, we pursued ways to create more interesting and creative layouts, styles and interactions, to ensure we prioritised better user engagement and positive user experiences on the site.
VSI Alliance were delighted with the finished website and we continue to work with them, providing web hosting services.
“We recently had the pleasure of working with Kate and Grinning Graphics on our new VSI Alliance website (www.vsialliance.org.uk), and the experience was nothing short of exceptional.
From the initial consultation to the final launch, Kate demonstrated an impressive level of professionalism and expertise.
Their attention to detail and creative vision transformed our site into a user-friendly, visually appealing platform that perfectly represents our organisation’s mission.
Kate is always available to answer questions and provide updates, and we couldn’t be happier with the result.
We highly recommend Grinning Graphics for anyone looking to enhance their web presence. Thank you for bringing our vision to life!”
Jordan Baker - Community Journalist
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