We were asked by the National Centre of the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to update their current Drupal 7 powered site to Drupal 9, along with improvements to the site’s user experience and branding.
The aim was to modernise the site to use the latest CMS technologies (Drupal 9) to ensure innovative digital services could be created to meet the needs of users, whilst also ensuring continued support and security updates from Drupal and the Drupal development community.
It was important that the site’s look and feel was updated to be consistent with the rest of the modernised NC3Rs digital estate whilst ensuring information was easy to find, view and understand. To meet this, we examined the exiting site analytics data, performed a content inventory and audit to produce an updated Information Architecture (IA) – removing content that was no longer required, updating, and adding content where gaps were found. All of this needed to be paired with the existing members area and digital services to allow users to subscribe and manage the NC3Rs newsletters, attend webinars and meetings, as well as keeping up with funding opportunities.
What we did
- Review of peer sites and idea generation
- Review of current site analytics to understand current user journeys and top tasks
- Perform a content inventory and audit – allowing us to understand the existing types of content and the relevance of content/services against the defined user goals
- Created an updated information architecture and wireframe prototype development
- Created an NC3Rs branded creative design, with a focus on a responsive/adaptive layout for mobiles and tablets, alongside desktop platforms
- Drupal 9 content management system setup and deployment, members area, newsletter, custom Google Search API Integration, bespoke form creation, bespoke taxonomy based resource section with faceted search
- Full events creation, listing and management
All pulled together by our lean project management approach – a well balanced mix of agile and waterfall, to ensure the project ran smoothly and was deployed ahead of schedule and in budget.
Take a peek: nc3rs.org.uk
