SAMH

Website design for renowned charity

Project Information

Categories: Public and Non profit making sectors

Released: 01/01/2010

The Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) is Scotland’s leading mental health charity and works hard to ensure that the subject of mental health remains a topic for discussion and action in the wider public domain. SAMH required a new website that incorporated an easy to use CMS and the ability to display content in an engaging manner. The site was designed to increase donations to support the fantastic work which SAMH was involved in.

SAMH were actively involved in working with a number of high profile celebrities such as Sir Chris Hoy, it was important that the new website found a way to actively display these relationships.

We created the new website on the Umbraco CMS, we understood the limited technical capabilities which the SAMH staff had and so opted for an open source user friendly CMS as the platform of choice. This allowed SAMH to have direct control over many elements of the website such as text, calls to action, videos etc.

We decided to place the stories of work carried out at the heart of the website, ensuring users were immediately exposed to the support and work SAMH provides. The brand of the website was strong but not overwhelming, ensuring the content was not lost.

Social media plays a key role within the website as a number of feeds are pulled directly into the homepage allowing for a fresh community feel. Clear calls to action to ‘follow’ and ‘like’ the SAMH social channels were implemented to grow their social following.

The website was built with cutting edge SEO practices at its core ensuring all required content was crawlable and indexable.

The homepage provided clear calls to action for both donations and a brand ambassador’s area, allowing SAMH staff the ability to easily display specific campaigns being carried out by their famous spokespeople.

Overall the website is clear and simple to use which is what you would expect from a website operating within this sector.

The finished site offered SAMH a means of communicating their work more effectively to a wider audience, keeping visitors up to date with regular news and details of events, while also increasing engagement and time spent on the website. It played a significant part in helping them build authority as a source of knowledge and understanding regarding mental health issues across Scotland.

SAMH’s social media following increased by 154% in the first week of the site’s launch. The site itself continues to receive a growing number of hits daily, increasing interest and educating Scotland about the important work being carried out every day by Scottish mental health workers.

Results

Let the numbers do the talking

154%

360/360
Increase in social following by 154%

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