Plan International Australia

Overview

Plan International Australia (PIA) is the charity for girls’ equality and has been doing life-changing work for over 80 years, helping to create a just world that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. 

PIA recognised the need to grow their bold and impactful brand personality online,  and Marlin took on the challenge.

From an initial website discovery session with the team at PlA, we provided a new website strategy and a staged development plan to implement. 

The refreshed website including integrations are the first stage of the development plan that already serves many needs of their stakeholders.

Problem

PIA recognised the need to grow their bold and impactful brand personality online.

Solution

We re-platformed, redesigned the website, and integrated some of their essential systems to provide a fresh, seamless, and easy to use website solution.

The Challenge

With regular online fundraising campaigns, communications and a large donor database to engage, PIA needed a website solution that would not hinder their current digital activities or future plans.

Their old website was hosted on Sitecore, a web platform the PIA digital team found constrained them from successfully delivering some of their digital campaigns online. It was also not WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

With this project, PIA’s priority was to reduce management effort and development costs, as well as to enhance the experience for its supporters and visitors.

The Solution

Website Discovery Workshop

With multiple stakeholders, goals and technologies, we began with a website discovery session with the PIA team to get to the core of their challenges.

In a series of workshops and staff interviews, we uncovered all the essentials to inform the best website solution for PIA – from organisation strategy, user personas, brand guidelines and competitor analysis to staff wish lists … just to name a few.

Scalability 

One of the key issues raised from the website discovery workshops was the website’s scalability. PIA has a full calendar of fundraising appeals, with multiple social campaigns running simultaneously, directing constant traffic to the site. 

They needed a web platform that had a simple backend so multiple staff members could update content, assets and create campaign landing pages when and as needed. The old system was bespoke and limited in the available features and often required development to enhance features that were available in an apps store or in other platforms.

Together with the PIA team, we identified the need for a web platform that was scalable with an easy-to-use content management system to cater for all their current and future digital activities.

In response, we migrated their existing web platform to WordPress, which provides flexibility, scalability and simplicity for their internal staff. In addition, we have broken down core components of their website and functionality so they can have a ‘drag and drop’ approach to building new sections or pages of their website.

UX and accessibility

The website solution provides a seamless and pleasant experience for its online supporters. 

What you currently see on the website is a result of the feedback we received from user interviews, data analytics, brand guidelines and the team at PIA’s website “wishlist”.

In addition, meeting AA WCAG compliance was a major consideration designing the website. We also installed and customised their accessibility widget so they become AA WCAG compliant while remaining on-brand.

Integrations that save time and resources 

With the level of traffic and online activity on the old PIA website, our solution had to consider how best to integrate their existing systems to save the PIA team’s time on duplicate and manual tasks.

A couple of useful integrations:

• The BBCRM which runs the site’s child sponsorship process is linked to the BBIS CMS, which is currently pulling real time data of child sponsorship information online. With a few clicks on the child sponsorship page, potential supporters can access accurate and live information about children available for sponsorship based on their searches and filters applied.
• With the multiple (and growing) campaign contact forms on PIA’s website, each form is now synced to their marketing automation tool, Autopilot, so supporters are taken on a seamless and distinctive journey planned for them by the team at PIA. 

This has provided the ability to build out additional integration including the ability to now connect and import the data in their website to the CRM automatically.

The Results

The replatform, refreshed design and integrations are the first stage of their major website redevelopment plan.

We can promise more good things to come that will benefit PIA’s online supporters, their internal stakeholders and assist their organisation to continue to grow their online presence.

Wrapping up

Working on a complex, technically hard and inefficient web platform can really let your digital team, and your ambition, down to meet the needs of your supporters.

An investment in your digital platforms can help your organisation save time and resources in the long run. 

Talk to us if you’re facing constant challenges. We can work with you to provide the best digital solution for your team and organisation so you can get on with your digital activities effectively and efficiently!