Affinity Trust
We worked with the Affinity Trust team to build an entirely new website from scratch, and created a solution that has provided the charity with the tools and functionality to reach, engage and support more beneficiaries than ever before.
Results with a difference for a charity with a story
Since the new site was launched in 2021, Affinity Trust has seen results including a conversion rate uplift on the primary help form of over 60%.
Founded in 2007, Affinity Trust was formed to provide Armed Forces veterans with the vital support and facilities needed at a time when they are often at their most vulnerable.
The support the charity provides individuals with the skills, confidence and knowledge to make a success of life in the civilian world.
Our brief to make a change
While the previous site had served the organisation well, there were a wide-range of challenges to overcome. Affinity Trust stated from the outset that this project wasn't just about 'building another website'. The new site needed to place users at its heart and that began by identifying all of the issues with the existing experience, and knowing the audience better than ever before.
There were a number of significant issues with the existing site, such as it not being mobile optimised creating a poor user experience for the majority of people who were visiting it using mobile devices.
Key challenges
The donations journey didn't support standard mobile payments such as Apple and Google pay meaning it was awkward for users who wanted to pay in ways that were familiar and convenient to them.
While the site was rich with content, the IA was, to quote the client "a mess". The average page depth was 5.5 and the furthest page depth was 11 with no links back to the home page meaning users often ended up spending too long trying to find the information relevant to them.
Research also identified other issues such as a lack of admin workflows for page authoring, existing forms were unnecessarily long and low engagement rate on the events page and a high-level of drop-off leading to low levels of people signing up for events.
The way that this project has evolved and has been delivered shows we made the right decision to work with Giant Digital. Given its size and the many moving parts, combined with the number of people from different part of Affinity Trust, the project went beyond smooth in terms of process.
We couldn't have achieved this outcome without Giant Digital, and we recognise you saved the day on more than one occasion. We're beyond excited to see what else we can do digitally over the next few years.
Our Approach
Working closely with the Affinity Trust team, Giant developed a lean, agile approach to the project, investing significant time in translating insight from research into requirements that informed the new Information Architecture and User Interface, and defined features, functionality, content, and messaging that would better serve both the charity and its audience.
A set of key principles sat at the heart of the project, which ensured the team were all aligned around a central mission for making the site work in the way it needed to. From making it easier to find things, using language that was simple, human and not overly-complicated, to ensuring the site was fully accessible to all users on all devices, every aspect of the site has been developed with the users’ needs at its core.
The impact we've made
In particular, certain elements of the site have had a significant impact on the charity:
60% conversion rate uplift on the primary help form.
13% increase in the number of people using the help button.
20% uplift in the number of people registering for events.
It's difficult to pinpoint many of these improvements on one single factor. The impact has been derived from a combination of the way the site has been designed, the language, the usability, and the accessibility. All of these factors combined have helped drive the conversion rate through the roof.
