Redefining digital experiences for a rapidly scaling sports body

CIMSPA Website

The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) is the professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector. They are committed to supporting, developing and enabling professionals and organisations to succeed and, as a result, inspire the nation to become more active.

Client

“Help us launch a new website, utilising a fit for purpose CMS platform that matches our ambition as a rapidly scaling organisation.”

They needed to remove this blocker and their new website needed to deliver:
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<li dir="ltr" role="presentation">A seamless user experience that supports members in achieving their goals across the highly complex CIMSPA ecosystem.</li>
<li dir="ltr" role="presentation">A strong marketing function, allowing user data to be utilised for delivering valuable user experiences.</li>
<li dir="ltr" role="presentation">A CMS platform that is centred on personalisation.</li>
<li dir="ltr" role="presentation">A CMS that can act as an effective sales funnel for their not-for-profit commercial products, membership and partnerships.</li>
</ul>

Challenge

CIMSPA had identified that their existing website was no longer fit for purpose and was a barrier to their wider digital transformation goals.

Our Create phase followed, where previously gathered insights were harnessed to inform the design of a slick user experience, focused upon intuitively guiding users through each stage of their CIMSPA discovery journey. 
Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP) was chosen for the development of the core solution, not just for its CMS capabilities which are second to none. The key driver here was the wider marketing tools such as personalisation, which will be integral to CIMSPA as they continue to scale as an organisation.

Solution

Through our Explore phase, we rapidly immersed ourselves within the CIMSPA world, utilising a Jobs to Be Done methodology to understand the core user needs, and business stakeholder objectives.

As an organisation, CIMSPA have ambitious strategic goals. CIMSPA now has a fit for purpose website which is already providing a vastly improved user experience, however most importantly the platform is a solid foundation that can readily scale in line with wider upcoming digital products and services as part of CIMSPA’s digital transformation journey.

Results

A solid foundation enabling CIMSPA’s wider digital transformation to thrive.  

A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members

The Caravan and Motorhome Club

With a growing base of over 1 million members, the Caravan and Motorhome Club are one of the UK’s largest membership organisations, and no stranger to navigating change and disruption.

“Help us stay relevant in the market”

Between membership portals, booking systems, and external web apps, The Caravan and Motorhome Club has built a dependency on legacy systems which has made it difficult to identify the best ways to innovate. The Club turned to us when looking for a partner to help drive and deliver their digital customer experience agenda and challenge how they innovate in the marketplace.

The Club need to exceed member expectations in order to stay relevant and gain market share.

We built and followed through a plan to tackle digital transformation on multiple fronts: infrastructure, customer experience and strategy. Since starting to work together in 2018, we have:
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<li>Delivered a new business proposition aimed at a younger market: <a href="https://www.experiencefreedom.co.uk/">Experience Freedom</a>.</li>
<li>Delivered a digital roadmap to upgrade their internal systems.</li>
<li>Supported with launching a new overseas booking system.</li>
<li>Designed &amp; developed Digital Membership Card functionality, giving members a digital identification via the mobile app.</li>
<li>Designed &amp; developed late availability search functionality, giving members improved accessibility to last minute travel, proactively preparing CAMC for the pandemic fuelled staycation climate, leading to an unprecedented increase in site inventory sales.</li>
</ul>

Our ongoing partnership has so far tackled different challenges at the digital technology strategy and business strategy levels.

Award winning digital experience for a global market leader

Güntner

Güntner is a commercial cooling and industrial refrigeration business, 90 years old and headquartered in Munich, Germany. It’s a major player in the global cooling business.

"Help us increase online traffic and improve our website experience."

Designing and building a new website was much more than creating more brochureware - they had limited understanding of their audiences, how they bought and their experience of transacting with Güntner. They also needed to be able to facilitate a localised approach to content, as their global product range not only needed translating for different markets, but also updating based on what was available where. To add to journey complexities, certain products needed different content and supporting materials in some regions.

The family-run business wanted their digital presence to reflect their size, expertise, and state of the art technology. Something that their existing c.10 year old website was no longer able to deliver on.

We carried out an extensive, remote Explore phase, gaining insight into the Güntner audiences through international workshops, surveys and interviews. This insight fed directly into a series of design and development sprints on the Optimizely DXC platform over a 6 month period, launching their new website and rolling out across 14 languages and markets. With a new website built on a Digital Experience Platform enabling a web estate of personalised experiences, online transactions, self-serve product configuration and a market-specific product offering.

The brief was to start by defining audiences and creating an international digital estate built to handle today’s complexity of audience journeys. We went beyond this, designing an entirely new rich visual experience in line with their new brand identity.

The results have been transformational; in 9 months to March 22, website visits are up 27%, there’s a 73% increase in new visitors, and mobile visits are up from 15% to 40%. Günter’s new global and market websites represent a huge step forward for the business and the industry. They now have a leading web presence, better than all the competition in terms of experience, brand consistency and managing the sales funnel online into sales. This also led to the project winning Silver in the ‘Best Corporate Website’ category of the prestigious Digital Impact Awards Europe in 2022.

27% increase in site visits across 14 global markets.

Transforming the online experience for a global change-maker

Practical Action

Practical Action is an innovative international development organisation putting ingenious ideas to work so people in poverty can change their world. As well as beneficiaries, their audiences include governments, media, donors, the private sector and a huge range of partner organisations.

“Help us tackle poverty with smart digital solutions and solid consultancy.”

Practical Action needed to transform its online experience to appeal to a new generation of donors who expect a slick online experience and powerful stories of innovation, compassion, and change. We were tasked with understanding the needs and motivations of the diverse audience, planning seamless user experiences, and integrating the site with thousands of digital assets.

The charity wanted their digital presence to provide impact and inspiration for supporters across three continents.

We took a Design Thinking approach to understand the audience's needs by conducting extensive workshops and video conferencing sessions with representatives from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Peru, Bolivia, Kenya, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
We even had two stakeholders calling in from the heart of the Amazon.  The insight gathered was used to create an extensive audience segmentation report, which informed the development of the site. Task modeling was used to plan seamless user experiences by defining functionality, navigation, and content from a user-first perspective. 
The site was built on WordPress, with a simplified UX and immersive storytelling experience that appealed to a new generation of donors. We also built a custom plug-in to integrate the site with Practical Action's digital asset library, giving access to tens of thousands of images and videos.

The brief was to start by defining audiences to create a user-centric global digital estate. We went beyond this, designing an entirely new rich visual experience in line with their digital aspirations.

The new website had a significant impact on Practical Action's online presence. The site's immersive storytelling experience and simplified UX appealed to a new generation of supporters, leading to an increase in donations. The custom plug-in we built to integrate the site with Practical Action's digital asset library gave access to an enormous archive of rich content, making it easier for webmasters to manage the site's content.

Impact and inspiration for a new generation of supporters.

Timetabling SAAS for one of Europe’s leading transport brands

Arriva

Arriva UK Bus is one of the main bus operators in the UK. Their customers rely on over 5,000 vehicles that cover hundreds routes all over the country, 365 days a year.

“Help us to turn data into on-demand timetables.”

Routes and timetables weren’t made available to commuters until they physically got to the bus stop to find them printed on a nearby post. In the backend, their timetabling data was split into a number of components like day/time, geo coordinates and polygons of ‘zones’, which made it complex, difficult to understand and impossible to translate into a usable service for customers.

Believe it or not, Arriva Bus’ daily customers didn’t know when to expect their bus.

We could then syndicate those data sources through the business for ticket/route purchase, downloads, brochures, bus stops and route planning on mobile and website.

Using a wide array of technologies and impressive maths, we created a web service that could interpret the various data sources and repurpose them into timetables.

For its customers, it meant they can plan their journeys on the fly. Even though the core website and booking engine has changed since, we’re still running the SaaS dynamic timetabling service across the Arriva digital estate to this date.

From no timetables to dynamic, up-to-date, online schedules - this was a huge business shift for Arriva.

Individualised customer experiences for seven sister brands

The Woburn Estate

The UK-based Woburn Estate includes a number of properties, including Woburn Safari Park, Woburn Abbey, Golf Club, Hotel and Bedford Estates.

“Help us create a better experience for our customers and marketing team.”

All seven of the Woburn Estate brands run based off different business models, and have different audiences. And all of them are also in need of a strong digital presence, with a level of coordination and control over sprawling platforms and technologies.

How do you bring together seven disparate websites and brands with a common heritage under control?

We built a core engine through Optimizely DXP to underpin the entire ecosystem, giving individual brand, functionality and content flexibility. For each platform, we let each brand’s business and customer goals lead the experience design process. It meant the central team at Woburn can manage all seven sites through a common CMS interface, and deliver personalised journeys to visitors. It also gives us the flexibility to add new sites at light speed, without high cost or fresh development delays.

We went under the bonnet in the Explore part of our process, to uncover the strategic needs of the Estate, its employees, its customers and technology requirements.

The Safari Park’s website is seing daily site users rising threefold to 15,000 per day, triple the page views per session and has dropped the bounce rate from over 50% to 14%.

The Woburn teams now have a high performing site across the estate.

Redefining the holiday search experience

Gini concept

The holiday search experience isn't fit for purpose. We go on holiday to change how we feel, but we book our getaways based on destination names, endless choice and how other people experience places. It's often confusing, frustrating and tedious.

“What if you could book your holiday based on how you want to feel?”

We asked ourselves… how else could holiday searches happen? And how could technology be used to reimagine this experience?

How could we possibly know if our holiday choices will deliver on our expectations, when the search experience doesn't allow us to express what we're looking for?

A vision for a tech-infused ecosystem, but tech is not the star here. The experience is. One where you create a collection of getaway moments, with sound, tastes, views... Beyond destination and categories. One where the most frustrating parts of the booking process are replaced by sensory-led exploration, to unlock holiday decisions that are true to you. In this vision, technology redefines the dreaming and planning phases of travel.

Our answer was Gini - an ingenious concept for a platform that will allow you to curate, share and book the holiday you want, based only on how you want to feel when you get there.

You get to create soundscapes to match your perfect holiday atmosphere. Gini detects pure moments of joy with face recognition technology. And learns what tickles your tastebuds as you swipe left and right. All to help surface the ideal holiday you never knew you wanted. Without ever clicking on a category again.

Let your senses guide how you feel. And techology to understand what you like, love and crave. So you can curate your atmosphere, your moments, your space. And share with your friends and family too.

18,000 qualifications delivered at speed to offset Covid-19 in Sport

CIMSPA

The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) is the professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector.

“Help us launch a product in less than a month.”

CIMSPA needed to quickly put in a solution to match training providers with those seeking qualifications, ready for when sport opened back up again.

The world of sports management was on the brink of losing 30,000 professionals as a result of Covid-19, with expiring qualifications and the closure of facilities.

ReTrain works to identify training needs and matches them (against geographical and socio-economic data, as well as organisational need) with registered training providers, through a web interface to quickly bring the parties together.

Along with CIMSPA and Sport England, we created ReTrain - a web application launched as an MVP in four weeks. The following two agile sprints got it to completion within 11 weeks of having received the brief.

We’ve since moved on in a programme of continual improvement, currently working on its second phase.

A hugely successful programme for CIMSPA, delivered at pace. We achieved 18,000 lockdown qualifications, 600+ training requests and 100 UK employers upskilled their activity workforce.

Complex freight bookings made easy

Eurotunnel

Eurotunnel is one of the railway shuttle services operating in the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.

“Help lorry drivers book freight journeys across the British Channel”

With requirements for tracing goods, invoicing account customers, loading based on size and type of freight being carried, and different legislation requirements between the UK and EU, it’s a lengthy and complex challenge. The gap Eurotunnel had was providing an easy and efficient mobile experience for regular hauliers to share this information as part of their booking and for their logistics teams to make sense of it all.

Eurotunnel’s Le Shuttle Freight service needs every one of its 1.4 million annual freight vehicles to pre-book every single journey and share details about what is being transported.

Mapping out all the journey and booking variants helped us to create the optimum path for users. We experimented with design variants, a high fidelity prototype for user validation and internal and external testing to develop the first iteration of the app. This led to a full clickable prototype, specs and technical functionality prior to handing over to the internal team for onward development.

We needed to simplify and personalise, so that drivers’ details, number plates and regular cargo could all be pre-completed in the app, and the journey made more efficient for both customer and Eurotunnel.

Plus, Eurotunnel and their freight drivers have already benefitted from the improvements in the booking experience.

Phase one of the booking journey has been implemented in spite of Covid, Brexit and legislation changes.

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You lose ground when you stand still. Let's get moving.

Work

Digital transformation in action. Relevant today, built for tomorrow.

Our work | Digital transformation in action

three mobile phones laid side by side with the Caravan and Motorhome Clubs website loaded up on them

Work

Digital transformation in action. Relevant today, built for tomorrow.

Redefining digital experiences for a rapidly scaling sports body

A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members

Award winning digital experience for a global market leader

Further work

Transforming the online experience for a global change-maker

Timetabling SAAS for one of Europe’s leading transport brands

Individualised customer experiences for seven sister brands

Redefining the holiday search experience

Award winning digital experience for a global market leader

18,000 qualifications delivered at speed to offset Covid-19 in Sport

Complex freight bookings made easy

A roadmap to industry-leading digital journeys for members