YMCA England & Wales was looking for a brand-new website to hero their vibrant brand but also has a seamless UX.
YMCA currently serves over 570,000 people across England and Wales and was looking to improve its digital presence to make it easier for people to find and access their services, and also encourage more participation in events, fundraising, and online donations.
There are over 83 independent YMCAs throughout England and Wales. The vision for this website theme is for it to be able to roll out to the local YMCAs.
The YMCA England & Wales website is built on a bespoke in-house framework using the latest technology and WordPress platform.
The website is built using flexible content blocks to allow them to not only amend existing pages but also create completely new ones. This gives scope for their website to grow and develop with their business. This is also ideal for the rollout of the theme to local YMCAs who all offer different services and may want to modify templates.
We built in multi-level search functionality so users can easily search the website in one click which is key for service users who come to the website with a specific need.
The new website has been completely redesigned utilising the existing YMCA brand and assets but ensuring it’s a modern, impactful, vibrant experience to really reflect the organisation’s values and the services offered by YMCA.
Ultimately YMCA offers opportunities, safety, and hope for the future, by transforming people’s lives, and the website now reflects that purpose. We ensured users could access information quickly including their nearest YMCA, charity shop and clothing bank as well as finding out more about YMCA including an interactive history of the organisation. It also includes multiple donate links throughout the site at relevant places in the user journey to encourage additional donations on-site.
It was important that the new theme had a good reception and uptake from local YMCAs. We built a microsite for YMCA to circulate to the local YMCAs promoting the new YMCA website theme and detailing the different packages on offer.
This was communicated out to the YMCA network on Y-Hub the internal communication platform we developed for YMCA England and Wales.
Harrison Carloss are an extremely talented and committed group of individuals, with a real passion for delivering for their client. They were dedicated to each step of our project, thinking about how it would be received, and how it could be developed to become even better. They care, and that makes all the difference to an organisation like YMCA.
Jerahl Hall, Senior Communications Manager