Increasing online donations with a new WordPress website

Background

New Wine is a global Christian charity that works to see local churches change nations. Their primary focus is to enable church leaders to communicate effectively. They do this by being part of a network of ministries and other leaders, and through summer conferences, training events and resources. Their website is pivotal for ministries and churches around the world and is the destination for all their events and resources.

The challenge

New Wine’s existing Drupal website wasn’t optimised for mobile devices. And with the majority of their users using a phone to access the site, this hugely affected the overall experience for their community. Even on a desktop, users found it difficult to find what they were looking for, or know what was available to them. New Wine wanted to move away from their restrictive Drupal CMS and create a site that worked responsively, better reflected their offering, and had an improved information architecture (IA) that would deliver a better user experience.

Given our experience working with like-minded organisations, Tearfund and Toilet Twinning we were well placed to help New Wine with their digital presence.

When Covid hit in the spring, New Wine had to rapidly evolve their biggest event of the year. Moving the United festival into an online-only experience. They reassessed their digital needs and asked us to support them in creating a hub for a five-day digital festival. The site needed to showcase live speakers, music, performances, prayers and celebration.

The solution

Two responsive websites, new-wine.org, the digital destination for New Wine and its community, and breaksout.new-wine.org a hub to support their five-day festival.

The digital home of New Wine

We worked collaboratively with New Wine to produce a responsive website that provides their community with a beautiful online experience. We focussed on key user journeys to ensure that the features and functionality allowed the community to:

• Find and access the resources they need
• Know how to get involved in their work
• Donate easily to support the organisation

In addition to the community experience, the new WordPress CMS was tailored to give them the flexibility to update content and create new pages with ease.

Co-design discovery phase

The whole project was carried out during lockdown, but we were still able to work collaboratively with New Wine’s design team. We used Invision Freehand, an online whiteboard and collaboration tool to share ideas, feedback and work in real-time together. Utilising an agile and highly proactive process, we were able to explore more options and still make quick decisions, getting us all to the best possible result faster.

Within the discovery phase we explored and created:

• Sitemap & Information architecture (IA)
• Wireframes
• Moodboard
• Digital brand identity
• Designs

Homepage banner

As New Wine is many different things to many different audiences, the first impression from the website had to quickly showcase the breadth of their offering. The homepage banner was the perfect place to do this. We created a bespoke build for the fully customisable homepage carousel. The carousel showcases each of the facets of New Wine, seamlessly with animated transitions. It’s super flexible, allowing New Wine to update the copy and imagery, add a network or change the order in which they appear. On mobile, we adopted a typewriter style. This showcases their offering in a much more accessible manner for users on smaller screens.

Integrated Donation Journey

Fundraising is a critical user journey for charities and so an optimised donation page was a must. We designed and built a bespoke widget that integrated with Stripe for New Wine’s donations. This allows them to collect one-off or monthly donations in one streamlined workflow. The user can interact with the donation widget on-page, and then when ready. Progressing through a simplified donation journey, including an option for Giftaid. Understanding that a one-off donation is a different commitment to a monthly one, the widget was designed to give New Wine full flexibility. They can change the donation values, imagery and calls to action for each donation type to see the biggest impact. The journey beyond the widget was designed to reduce distractions and increase the number of supporters completing their donation journey.

Enhancing the experience with animations

Consideration was given to how users interact with the site and explore the variety of content. We added subtle animations sitewide to introduce content blocks and emphasise clickable elements as users browse the site. Rollover animations emphasise where you are and encourage users to click and continue browsing the site. We wanted the animations to elevate the visitor experience, add a feeling of depth and make the website a delight to visit.

WordPress CMS and page builder

Having come from a very restrictive CMS, New Wine knew they needed a powerful, flexible, and easy to use CMS that would ensure the continued success of the website. We built both websites with WordPress, with a comprehensive page builder. The page builder provides the New Wine team with a library of reusable components and customisable options. Giving them the ability to add and change pages using any combination of these components. This new way of creating pages was a breath of fresh air for the content editors and gave them the flexibility and control they needed to manage an ever-changing website. The New Wine team can include any combination of components on a page to create the perfect destination for their content and community.

United Breaks Out

“United” is the highlight of the New Wine calendar. A two-week festival set in the English countryside where the community camps together to celebrate their faith with speakers and live events. Working collaboratively with the New Wine team, we helped bring the United festival vibes online in United Breaks Out. The responsively designed website has an exciting video homepage banner to instantly bring the festival feel to life. Simple navigation allows users to access the packed programme of online speakers and events quickly and easily. We developed an interactive festival map to navigate the site more playfully and included a space for the community of attendees to share pictures of their home set-up and donate to great causes.

Scalable infrastructure

The website was the hub of the online festival, housing the schedule and live talks (hosted on YouTube Live). It was imperative that everyone could access the information they needed quickly. Especially directly after a talk when the site was experiencing a high volume of concurrent traffic. We worked with Amito to provide a scalable infrastructure solution that could react and adapt to times when people would be interacting with the site at the same time.

The site had some fantastic feedback from attendees and will be updated and evolved this year as the online festival returns for 2021.

The results

New Wine has had some excellent feedback from the community and great results following the launch of the new website.

In the first month, New Wine:

• received over £15k in additional donations
• saw a 15% increase in user engagement
• saw user sessions increase by 35% 

New Wine’s community have been really positive about the new site, praising the overall design, navigation and usability.

“The new website looks clean and fresh, I found it so much easier to find what I was looking for”

We are so pleased that our partnership with New Wine has enabled them to have a beautiful new website that helps them better communicate their offering, raise vital donations and serve their community.

If you are looking to update your website, improve engagement or increase income, do not hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.