Sector(s)
War Child UK is charity that supports the future and wellbeing of children living through the damaging reality of some of the world's most dangerous war zones. Founded in 1993, the charity works with vulnerable children and communities in war torn areas; providing safe spaces, access to education, skills training and much more to ensure that children’s lives are not torn apart by war.
War Child UK is part of an War Child international, an organisation with offices all over the world protecting, educating, and empowering marginalised children.
About the project
The UK War Child team came to us with a mission: to get a new site live in time for Christmas. We calculated that after planning we could have one three week sprint before we had to deploy to live.
The previous War Child UK site wasn’t responsive, so the charity was losing donation opportunities from supporters on mobile and tablet devices. They also wanted a bold new design, with a high focus on imagery, for the highest possible impact and to create empathy.
From a Content Management System (CMS) point of view, the client wanted to rationalise and consolidate content types, so the site could be easily managed without large overheads. Time counts when you’re saving the world, so the website needed to enable editors to get information and campaigns out quickly and easily, without a large website team or dependency upon external agents.
The original site also integrated with Stripe and Salesforce. The client wanted to ensure this functionality remained to provide a seamless experience for their donors, and reduce the need for internal training on the new site.
The final decision was to build and launch a Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) with donations, and a simplified CMS in a single three week sprint. It had to be a polished product that would serve them during one of their busiest periods, without a loss of critical functions, such as donations. A MMP achieves the earliest possible route to market and therefore brings benefits sooner without cutting corners. With a tight deadline this approach was right.
Smart Payment System
Warchild rely on donations from their website so a secure reliable payment system was vital and a principle project requirement. By using Drupal's excellent Paragraphs Module, which allows content managers to introduce page components in any order, allowed us to provide Warchild the capability of introducing donation calls to action within content and user journeys in a more creative manner.
Responsive Design
The site was developed responsively incorporating the new design to meet the goal of optimising mobile donations. This is a given in today's online climate, but producing a responsive site at 3 breakpoints in just 3 weeks isn’t. The websites content was optimised to small screen sizes and given a clear hierarchy to present the most relevant information to users first, optimising conversion rates.
Rationalised Content Management
The existing site had 25 content types. The client has expressed a desire to reduce the complexity of the back end of the site for a simpler content management system for editors. There was limited scope within the project but we were able to rationalise and streamline the sites existing content for a simple migration, and provide a simple content editing system for War Childs UK team.
Emotive Emphasis through the use of Images
Images are an essential method in conveying War Childs message to create an emotionally charged experience for users. The resulting design of the site was extremely image heavy. Our front-end specialists optimised image sizes, video assets and Javascript performance across mobile, tablet, and desktop allowing the site to load quickly and function well across all screen sizes. Using Drupal's paragraphs module enabled our team to provide a content manager experience allowing flexibility whilst ensuring brand consistency across devices.
CTI Digital were quick to respond to our brief and helped us to launch our MMP website before Christmas whilst also ensuring quality in the fast delivery process. We have had great feedback internally and have more flexibility to create the type of content we need with some great results to prove our decision of an MMP launch.
Dave O’Carroll, Head of Digital, War Child UK
Outcome
War Child UK now have in place a mobile donation platform underpinned by a powerful Drupal CMS. Thanks to Drupal’s extensibility and with our Agile process we have since added a series of additional features, all aimed at placing War Child in a better place to help children in crisis. We have also been managing their online advertising
Thanks to the Mosul appeal; War Child have a team on the ground right now providing safe spaces and emergency care for 6,000 boys and girls who have fled the city.
The site launched just before Christmas 2016. In the past year the UK War Child site has seen a 96% Increase in conversion rate to donate. As a result War Child has also experienced a brilliant 42% Increase in their online donations.
Why Drupal was chosen
Warchild had previously delivered their website using Drupal. A range of contributed modules were available which satisfied their requirements and future digital strategy. These included Stripe payment and Salesforce CRM integration. Combined with this a high level of adoption and investment in Drupal amongst peer organisations made remaining on Drupal a compelling choice.
Technical Specifications
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
We selected the use of a pre-existing module available in Drupal called Stripe to take payments. Using Stripe removed the need for a fully featured solution like Commerce meaning the barriers to achieving our tight deadline were significantly reduced.
A Salesforce integration was also introduced to help manage and track donors using the existing module.
Using these modules allowed our developers to produce the necessary payment features for the website without much customisation. Using existing modules we were able to free up time to work on optimising these features and the design of the website, making best use of the available budget.
