The challenge
Shifting to the NDIS, Melbourne City Mission (MCM) sought to redevelop their website to meet the current and future demands of a self-service disability model.
The new site needed to provide MCM with greater flexibility to cater to their diversified customer and donor needs. Our challenge was to understand the online needs of underrepresented groups such as people living with disability, people with an acquired brain injury or adults and young people experiencing homelessness.
Approach
We took a co-design approach that required us to tailor our interviews and workshops to meet the specific communication needs of MCM customers. It was important that we identified the key functionality and features that would best support the diverse group of users engaging with the MCM website. This informed our development of the key business and functional requirements, IA and functional specifications.
Robust user testing refined and validated the recommended IA and wireframes. All content pages in the current site were mapped to the new IA and content templates were developed for MCM content authors.
Our content strategy identified content types and the actions required to meet the goal of maintaining a high standard of content quality and usability. Included in this new strategic approach were editorial guidelines and a content governance framework to establish and monitor standards and good practice.
An important element of this project was to assist MCM to identify a potential website development vendor. Our specifications informed the request for quote and we worked with MCM to shortlist and interview potential vendors.
I like that the [MCM] website has lots of positive photos showing how services have helped people.
Outcomes
Overall, we successfully moved the website from an internally focused site to one that reflects the shift to NDIS and a self-service disability model.
Supported by the website, MCM now enjoys greater acquisition and retention of clients and donors.
Simplicity was a key requirement of all of MCM’s customers. The new MCM website responds to this need with its simple and clean look and direct and accessible content.
The information architecture was robustly tested with MCM’s diverse audiences providing confidence that it meets the online needs of users. User experience testing of the IA was successful. Completing key tasks using the new IA achieved an 85% success rate.
See the new website at www.mcm.org.au.
