The Childhood Trust

Key Objectives

• Design and develop a state of the art website with a smooth and optimised user experience
• Elevate The Childhood Trust’s brand with a simple yet impactful design
• Build an intuitive top-level navigation that funnels visitors to their desired goals
• Keep the focus of the website on children using imagery, video and clear messaging
• Use interactive features and image-led designs to reflect the charity’s impact and values
• Ensure that the website is fully responsive and functions across key browsers
• Customise the CMS to ensure that the website can be easily edited and updated

Fresh and modern design

Our first priority was to ensure that the new website had a clean and modern aesthetic that incorporated the charity’s key brand elements and colours.

Based on a series of workshops and initial benchmarking, we presented a range of potential visual concepts, from which The Childhood Trust selected their favourite to take forward.

This allowed us to give the website a cleaner, more impactful look and feel which is reflective of the charity’s brand and values.

“JBi’s designers have elevated the brand and helped to redefine who we are. We wanted the new website to reflect the work that we do and encapsulate our values. I think the designs absolutely achieve that.”

Laurence Guinness, Chief Executive at The Childhood Trust

“JBi did an amazing job making our website look professional but also maintaining a friendly feel, which was really important for us as a children’s charity. The children we support are at the heart of what we do and the website reflects that.”

Riley McNair, Engagement Manager at The Childhood Trust

Optimised User Experience

The success of The Childhood Trust’s new website will ultimately be judged on its user experience and ability to funnel visitors to their desired end-points.

We assessed the UX of the existing website before working with The Childhood Trust to understand its three key user types: volunteers, donors and prospective partner charities.

In order to serve each of these personas, we:

• Benchmarked other successful charity sites for insights on navigation and UX
• Worked collaboratively to create an information hierarchy with optimised journeys
• Made the “Donate” CTA (Call to Action) prominent and part of the sticky navigation
• Offered consultation on page names and signposting
• Split the Contact Us page by user type 

“Websites can be tricky – they can look great but the user experience often falls flat. I think that the new website’s user experience is superb.”

Laurence Guinness, Chief Executive at The Childhood Trust

Reflective of the charity's values

The Childhood Trust wanted its new website to clearly convey its values and successes – an area where its previous website had fallen short.

In order to achieve this, we worked closely with The Childhood Trust to find innovative ways to demonstrate the charity’s impact.

The Our Projects page includes a map of all of the charity’s project locations, and the Projects We Fund page offers users a filter to search through the hundreds of charities that the Childhood Trust has supported over the years.

Interactive features are also used across the website to demonstrate the charity’s successes, such as for the bedroom side-by-side on the Decorate A Child’s Life page and the “Theories of Change” section on the About Us page.

Finally, we included an interactive model on the Apply For Funding page to show how The Childhood Trust’s match-funding process works.

“If you’re a charity and you need to enhance your digital presence, you need friends like JBi on your side. I cannot think of a better partner and we are forever grateful.”

Laurence Guinness, Chief Executive at The Childhood Trust

Results & Testimonial

Everybody at JBi is delighted to have been able to support The Childhood Trust in taking such an important step forward with its new website.

Since launch, the website has achieved the following:

• 90% increase in traffic to the Childhood Trust’s third-party donation page
• 36% increase in average number of monthly donations since the website’s launch
• Total value of monthly donations has more than doubled since launch
• Overall bounce rate reduced by 20%
• Average session duration increased from 1m 20s (February) to 2m 17s (May)
• 200+ pages indexed and validated by Google

“The website is everything we could have asked for and more. JBi’s account management and handling skills were superlative. The planning was first rate, there was never a time when it wasn’t clear where we were in the journey and I didn’t feel stressed at any time – which, for me, is a first!”

Laurence Guinness, Chief Executive at The Childhood Trust

“I cannot speak highly enough of the JBi team. Everything was done in a timely manner and we were well supported throughout; there was a lot of care and thoughtfulness on JBi’s part which we really appreciated. It made the experience both enjoyable and stress free.”

Riley McNair, Engagement Manager at The Childhood Trust

The team is looking forward to extending our partnership and supporting The Childhood Trust in any way that we can in the future.

If you have a project that you would like to discuss with the JBi team, please don’t hesitate to get in touch through hello@jbidigital.co.uk or by calling 0207 043 2510.