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The Benevolent Society

The Benevolent Society is Australia's first and oldest charity. It is an independent, non-religious, not-for-profit organisation which aims to help families, older Australians and people with disability live their best lives.

The Challenge

A key component of our digital transformation strategy was to transition to a new CMS and redesign our website. The CMS and publishing process had to be intuitive and require little training for content administrators.

We also wanted a capability uplift from the new platform, with extensive out-of-the-box functionality such as a comprehensive site search engine and logging of administration activities. The previous CMS we were using was extremely difficult to update, and there were obsolete links across our website.

Our goal was to increase awareness of our brand, and make it easy for clients to navigate and to find information about our services. This required a refreshed look and feel, support for mobile and tablet, improvements to the site structure and improved reporting.

Elcom was a true partner when it came to developing and launching our new website. We continue to work closely with the Elcom team to deliver additional requirements to further enhance the website and are partnering with them on other key projects. Louise Genge, Director of Marketing
The Benevolent Society

Benevolent Society Website in Multiple Devices

The Solution

While our primary website audience consists of clients across a range of service portfolios, it also caters to their families, carers, volunteers, partners, donors, media and jobseekers. We undertook user experience (UX) workshops to uncover the needs and motivations of key stakeholders, and used these insights to optimise the website structure and content.

When choosing a vendor, we looked for a long term partner that could provide us with ongoing support for the website and future digital projects. We were impressed with the Elcom platform, as well as their team, and knew they could help us achieve our digital goals.

We engaged Elcom in the end to end implementation of the CMS and website; requirements gathering, solution design and website implementation.

The new website is optimised for critical customer journeys impacting customer retention, support and acquisition. Along with providing standard content on our services and programs, we implemented tools to help potential and existing clients and their families understand what services are available including:

  • The Service Finder Tool, created using Elcom’s out-of-the-box taxonomy and dynamic widgets. This enables users to quickly find services by filtering based on key criteria such as age of clients, service category and funding options.
  • The Service location Checker, custom developed by the Elcom team. This can be used to search for a specific service and then ascertain if it is available in a particular postcode.

Given our audience, it was crucial the website complies with current standards for web accessibility. With Elcom, we have access to WCAG compliant HTML and CSS compatible templates. At the top of our website, we have also included the ability to choose a high contrast mode, easily adjust the font size of text, change text into another language using the Google Translate tool, and use assistive technology which provides text-to-speech functionality.

 

Along with our main website, we launched our newsletter site using the Elcom multisite capability. The newsletter site has its own URL and design, and an RSS feed pulls new articles added onto the main website. Visitors can filter the content they see with the search and taxonomy, and subscribe to receive one of four newsletters. When publishers create a new article, they simply need to select the appropriate taxonomy. 

The Benefits

We’re really pleased with how well the website promotes The Benevolent Society brand and the services we offer.

 

  • From meeting web accessibility standards, to offering a Service Finder tool which provides a personalised view of services available, the website has been carefully designed to provide a seamless user experience for different stakeholders.
  • It is a key channel for attracting new clients and retaining existing clients . The website helps clients and their family members easily identify which services and programs are available.
  • The Elcom platform has met our requirements. It provides a rich, easy-to-use publishing environment for non-technical users, along with sophisticated functions for advanced users and developers to extend the platform functionality.

We have continued to work closely with the Elcom team after the initial launch to deliver additional requirements to further enhance the website and are partnering with them on other key projects including the new Benevolent Society intranet solution.

 

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