Save the Children relaunches 'cheaper and easier to use' Web site
Howard Lake | 24 September 2003 | News
Children’s charity Save the Children has re-launched its Web site in an effort to make it more appealing and approachable to its
audiences, and cheaper for the charity to run.
Redeveloped in partnership with digital agency Good Technology, SCF says the site has a new emphasis on the user and not the organisation. The old site was based
on the charity’s organisational structure, making it easy to manage but a difficult experience for the user. The new site moves beyond this, providing clear details of how visitors can help Save the Children with its
work, as well as providing a valuable resource on global development issues.
Research into site users’ requirements revealed that most of Save the Children’s supporters were primarily interested in what the charity did, and where it worked. The new site now has a ‘What we do’ section dedicated to each of the 35 issues the charity works on to improve the lives of children. Similarly, there is a’ Where we
work’ section on each of the 76 countries and regions, around the world and across the UK, in which they work.
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The ‘Resources’ section provides information for particular groups of people, such as teachers, policy makers and young people offering educational tools,
publications, and personal testimonies.
The ‘Get involved’ section contains all the different ways that users can take action to support Save the Children.
Save the Children decided that rather than developing a large in-house Web site team, they would invest in a Content Management System (CMS), which allows
individuals across the organisation to publish information directly onto the
site instead. The charity believes that this approach will save the charity money, and also create a much more up-to-date and comprehensive site.
Matt Travers, e-Communications Manager for Save the Children commented: “The new site is easy to use and cheap to run. We have such a diverse audience, ranging from young people themselves to policy makers at the World Bank, that our site had to be flexible enough to appeal to almost everybody.
“The Content Management System has allowed us to do just this as well as save
money. We expect that other large charities and public-sector organisations will adopt this approach in the future because, like us, information is their currency but they have to ensure public money is spent wisely.”
Good Technology was appointed towards the end of 2002 to help with the redevelopment of the Web site.
SCOPE has also undertaken a major redesign of its Web site follow user feedback.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.