Wealden Volunteering

The brief

When we started working with Wealden Volunteering in 2019 they were keen to update their rather dated-looking website and create one which would help them widen their audience, particularly to attract more youth volunteers.

It was also essential that the new website had robust back up and failsafe mechanisms in place because they had recently experienced a full loss of their website and its back up.

In 2024 the centre rebranded from the Uckfield Volunteer Centre to Wealden Volunteering, reflecting their wider reach across the region. As a result of this, we were asked to rebrand the website, including implementing their new logo and a change of website domain (address).

The solution

The original (pre 2019) website didn’t have distinct user journeys for their volunteering opportunities and community hub information. This gave the website a slightly muddled feel and made it more difficult for visitors to find what they wanted.

For their new website we created a clearer navigation, so it was immediately obvious where to go if you were a volunteer, an organisation seeking a volunteer or a member of the public looking for community information. We also structured the homepage to quickly take each user down a pathway relevant to their needs.

Our work included expanding the content of the website. In some cases, this was because we felt there was more to say (such as the benefits of charity membership and business sponsorship) and in other cases to signpost information more clearly for users and search engines (for example setting up separate pages for bus timetables and photocopying services).

Once built, the website was handed over to Wealden Volunteering for them to manage the content moving forwards, including adding new volunteering opportunities. We provided initial training and are always on hand if they have any questions or get stuck.

The website was built in WordPress, which is a highly flexible content management system. As a result, when the centre rebranded to Wealden Volunteering five years later, they didn’t have the expense of a full website rebuild. Instead, we were able to apply the new branding to the existing site at relatively low cost.

The results

The new website has made Wealden Volunteering’s opportunities far easier to find and engage with, and more straightforward for the administrators to manage.

For people in the Wealden area searching for volunteering opportunities, Wealden Volunteering is frequently cited in both traditional and AI search results.

Restructuring the website has also made the community information more visible, in fact the page providing information about bus and train timetables is the fourth most visited page on the website.

All of this is supported by our reliable UK-based hosting where every website is monitored 24/7 and backed up daily, with the back ups being stored off-server.