Worldwide Cancer Research

Strategy, UX, Design, Development

2024

worldwidecancerresearch.org

Worldwide Cancer Research is a small charity with big aspirations. Their ambition is to fund £20 million of research annually, getting us all closer to a world where no life is cut short by cancer. They partnered with team Yoyo to build a new website that would help make their aspirations a reality. 

The result is a seamless site which allows Worldwide Cancer Research to grow their community, discover and support the best research ideas, and provide their audience with more ways to easily donate.

The opportunity

The charity’s visual identity had already been refreshed, equipping the WCR team with a marketing, digital and brand strategy designed to help them meet the complex challenges faced by charity’s today. But they needed help bringing this new branding and strategy to life. 

By redesigning and developing their website we knew we could reflect their fresh brand, embrace the new strategy and provide WCR with a sales and marketing channel worth shouting about. 

The business need

Economic pressures mean it’s a tough time to be a charity. So WCR needed a new website which would help encourage donations and support their life-saving research. All while being simple for the team to use, and attracting new talent. 

The customer need

The WCR community needed a better online experience. Donors and researchers alike were in need of a website which makes it easy to engage with and support the charity digitally.

Our approach

To support WCR on their mission to create a world in which no life is cut short by cancer, we needed to build a new site which wasn’t just in line with their new strategy, but with user needs too. So we immediately got stuck in, digging deep to truly understand their audience.

We conducted in depth research and stakeholder interviews to make sure our team understood the challenges, concerns and priorities from a 360 perspective. From there, we knew we needed to make it simpler for people to find information, communicate more clearly exactly what WCR do, and show people how they can help. We also studied and fedback on existing audience personas the WCR team had, making sure they were as accurate and detailed as possible. Then using them to guide every UX and design decision.

Prioritising both performance and people.

But we didn’t stop at audience understanding, we conducted competitor analysis too. Exploring and gathering insights from the ways other research charities address industry challenges. This helped us to understand the importance of appealing to emotional givers and data-led sceptics. Inspiring our idea to combine social proof with emotive copy to connect with the widest audience possible. 

We wanted to make sure WCR’s new website looked amazing and performed amazingly. So we audited the brand’s SEO and analytics, recommending how to boost their performance on search engines through on and off-page content and technical SEO.

Crafting creative routes loved internally and externally. 

Next we created a site map geared for SEO and UX success. Combining our team’s expert knowledge with the insights from the discovery phase and using this to guide the type of page templates that should be designed. We created a model to discuss the functionality needed, making sure the WCR team were completely happy with what each template would include. 

With the nitty gritty sorted, it was time for our designers to flex their creative muscles. They started by curating a series of visual concepts which would both address the challenges identified and compliment the brand's refreshed identity. WCR loved the creative routes, and are confident their audience will too, quickly choosing one for our team to bring to life through the website build.

The results

After a successful launch, WCR's new site is already up and in action. Check back in soon for updated outcomes of this incredible charity's success.