A modern new website, supporting unpaid adult carers

Carers Network support unpaid adult carers in three boroughs in central London.

Their website is a hub of information for carers, providing visitors with a huge range of helpful resources, practical support, plus legal and financial advice. The charity had established that their existing website did not make it easy enough for users to find the content they were looking for: it was difficult to navigate and didn’t meet the needs of every site user, so they approached Adept looking for a full redesign of their website.

Understanding visitors’ needs

To ensure we appreciated the needs of the carers who would be using the new website, we conducted a series of stakeholder engagement sessions at the beginning of the project, to determine key requirements of the Carers Network website as a first-time visitor and on a returning basis.

We established that first-time users were seeking a lot of general information, including getting a carer’s assessment, learning details of any benefits they may be entitled to, and finding advice for their next steps. Returning users, on the other hand, were looking to engage with workshops, groups and classes, to meet with other carers, or to get support with a break from caring.

These findings informed our design of the site structure and determined the signposting from the homepage and other key landing pages. For example, we created a dedicated ‘Help for new carers’ page to break down everything a new carer and first-time visitor would need to know. And we made sure the events page was signposted from the top navigation, where returning users could easily find it after reading about the upcoming events in Carers Network’s email newsletter. The event listing system includes filters and tags that allow users to conveniently find what they’re interested in amongst a diverse range of online and in-person events, and book a place seamlessly on the website.

To align with the charity’s ongoing fundraising strategy, we also designed and built a fully integrated donation system, allowing Carers Network to process one-off and regular donations directly on their website.

Attentive use of brand

Carers Network’s brand was bold and vibrant, and we wanted to ensure we reflected this across the website, incorporating their ‘location point’ graphic both functionally and aesthetically into the design, and using their abstract brand shape as a holding device for images.

With accessibility considerations in mind, our designs combined the charity’s brand palette with white space, to make the signposts to content and calls to action stand out. Carers are understandably busy, and the website was designed and built to work responsively across desktop, tablets and mobile screens.

Realigned with users’ needs

Carers Network believe that no one should care alone. With their new charity website, users can now quickly navigate to the content they need, whether it’s finding practical support in the form of tailored information and legal advice, or connecting with others through counselling or attending an event.

The feedback on this project has been very positive, with increased user engagement now that the user journey has been simplified and the site better aligns with visitors’ needs. And, with future plans in mind, the user-friendly Unicity CMS allows Carers Network to make changes to their website as and when they need to.

Visit the Carers Network website

We’d love to talk to you if you’re looking to redesign your charity website to make sure it meets your users’ needs. Please get in touch with our team to discuss your requirements.