Designing and building a customer-centric website for one of the UK's leading social housing providers

Challenge

Stonewater, established in 2015, is one of the UK’s largest social housing providers, owning and managing over 37,500 homes for more than 80,000 residents up and down the country. Over the years, continuous improvements had been made to its original website, enhancing user experience through redesigned home pages, improved navigation and the integration of accessibility software.

A series of audits and implementation measures had been taken in response to evolving accessibility legislation, and after the successful migration of the site onto a cloud-based platform in 2021, the time was right to look at a major redevelopment. In 2022, a cross-functional steering group approved a transformative initiative to create a customer-centric corporate website with an exceptional customer journey, overall experience, and design. 

Solution

Collaborative discovery phase

During a collaborative discovery phase spanning three months, we engaged nearly 200 participants in surveys, tree testing, and interviews. Users identified navigation complexities, unclear paths, and challenges in repair reporting. We identified that gaps in content and lengthy and sometimes broken communication channels could leave some users feeling unsupported.  

Stakeholder education

Part of the project was to create a digital strategy that allowed Stonewater to achieve its business requirement to move from a central website management model to a devolved model where business owners could take responsibility for content under the stewardship of a core, central team. This required us to deliver a revised digital strategy aligned to the design and technical considerations of the Umbraco system. 

User journey mapping

Using internal process mapping completed by Stonewater, we proposed a streamlined approach for content management in line with shared priorities across the business and new roles, sign-off processes and prioritisation. Additionally, we mapped user journeys, ensuring clarity for various user segments such as renters, buyers, job seekers, and investors, among others. This process aimed to simplify journeys, reduce clicks, and tailor content to specific audience needs, enhancing overall user experience and engagement. 

Collating and setting expectations

We facilitated a sequence of refinement and sprint planning sessions, ensuring continuous communication and alignment. Weekly project reporting meetings were instituted to provide updates on spend and burn-down impacts. A thorough retrospective identified pain points and misalignments, leading to the implementation of agile ceremonies, structured refinement sessions, and robust forward planning.

Umbraco migration

There was an outdated Umbraco CMS on the former website, which required a technological transformation and upgrade as part of the project. Migrating to the updated Umbraco CMS marked the beginning of the site’s evolution, supported by Umbraco Cloud for hosting, Umbraco deploy for seamless content transfer, Umbraco workflow for content approval, and Umbraco forms for efficient information capture. The integration of Umbraco Cloud was configured to manage website scaling, ensuring optimal performance. This technological overhaul not only modernised the website but also laid the foundation for enhanced scalability and operational efficiency.

Impact

The site made an immediate impact, leading to a huge jump in website engagement, up 48% year on year, pointing to a much improved customer experience.   

Organic search also soared, up 279% year on year. 

The new site registered a much faster loading time, reduced to 472ms, down from 2.85 seconds. 

Immediately, at launch, there was a 10% reduction in time taken to complete the top five most frequent activities or queries.

There was also a drop in incremental quarterly bounce rate on the website - down 27%.

The site won the Bronze award in the Corporate Website category at the 2024 Digital Impact Awards.