Friends Of Meadowside - 2021 Half-Year Review

Friends of Meadowside is a Warrington-based charity that supports people struggling to cope without basic essentials. Its community centre has become a local hub for cultural activity and learning.

Before Christmas, a team of staff collected food-box donations for the charity, each contributing a couple of items. Shortly after Christmas, the charity agreed to become the team’s charity of the year for 2021. Since then, work has focused on redesigning and developing a new website for the organisation.

A new online home

The website and graphic design team built a modern site that highlights the charity’s work, making it easier for people to find information or seek help online. A new logo was designed, and the content across the site’s pages was rewritten.

The rewritten content now sets out the charity’s aims and objectives clearly, with a structure that makes navigation straightforward. The overall design is distinctive, helping the charity attract more visitors, while its minimal style keeps attention on the important information rather than distracting from it.

An ‘our ethos’ section expands when clicked, and hover animations on the menu and buttons improve the overall user experience. Animated page titles add another interactive element, helping to keep visitors engaged as they look for useful information.

What changed

The new site introduces a number of features compared with the previous design. The most noticeable are the hover animations on the menu and buttons, and an image slider on the homepage.

User interaction and experience matter not only for keeping visitors on a site but for making sure they enjoy browsing it. Images and media can draw attention away from text, so gathering them into a slider keeps everything in one place and reduces distraction, which helps hold users’ attention for longer.

The Friends of Meadowside website went live on 14 April 2021 and can be found at friendsofmeadowside.org.

Charities in Warrington or Cheshire interested in transforming their website and branding to reach more people in need of help can get in touch to find out more.