Website Redesign & Brand Refresh
The team at School’s Out Activities provide fun-filled school holiday day camps to kids aged 4 to 16 at prestigious venues across Suffolk and Essex. They approached us following a recommendation from a previous client (which is always nice!) with the challenge of redesigning their existing website, tightening up the booking process, and applying a more cohesive visual style to their brand collateral.
A Voyage of Discovery
Before we did anything, we commissioned a full digital marketing audit (DMA) by our partners Footprint Digital, which identified several areas of opportunity within the existing SEO strategy.
Alongside this, we performed our own deep-dive into how the business was performing, talking to the client to understand business goals, future objectives, customer needs, competitor analysis, and much more.
Enhancing the User Experience
The main aim was to offer the user a more visual experience and showcase the action-packed activities on offer, so we incorporated full-width banners at the top of key pages for images and video clips. Although the new site was going to be more photography-driven, we knew we could combine the illustrated aspects without it feeling jarring or lacking in consistency.
The end result shows that the different styles actually complement each other very well and offer an engaging visual experience for parents and children alike – striking a balance between playful and informative.
Responsive as Standard
The DMA identified that most visits were coming via mobile and tablet devices, which was a problem because the client freely admitted that the current mobile experience was “awful”. Clearly, a full mobile UX audit was required! We went through the mobile site with a fine-tooth comb, analysing whether each element was essential to the user journey, and if so, how could we optimise it for mobile and tablet.
Simplifying and Streamlining
One of the first things our UX audit uncovered was how convoluted the site’s navigation had become following various page/section additions over the years. Our recommendation was to simplify the overall page structure and condense everything into a more intuitive primary nav.
We conducted a user empathy session where we put ourselves into the shoes of a parent, evaluating which information they would consider most important when deciding whether to entrust their young child into the care of strangers. We also interviewed parents to ensure our assumptions tallied with their actual decision-making process.
As trust and credibility were key, we added testimonials and a trust signal bar prominently to core pages. We also added a comprehensive FAQs page and a gallery to show how fun, professional and safe the School’s Out Activities set-up is.
AND THE REFRESH DIDN’T END THERE…
With the launch of the new website, the client was keen to give the existing brand collateral a refresh. Again, rather than a quick polish, we analysed the current leaflets, banners and signage to understand what was working, and more importantly, what wasn’t. The end result was a much cleaner, more concise set of designs reflecting the new brand identity and tone of voice.
The Results
The new website is performing much better, in terms of both usability and SEO rankings. Traffic to the site has increased year-on-year and the refined booking process (which included a few minor bug fixes) is already showing an ROI with regards to an increase in bookings for summer holidays 2019.
We’ve continued to work closely with the School’s Out Activities team, providing marketing consultancy services to help them achieve their goal of expanding their presence to more venues across East Anglia!
