Manifesto helped one of the UK’s leading housing associations redesign and rebuild their website. Consolidating a huge content repository into a more easily navigable structure to help residents access important information quickly, and providing a conversational form to log repair requests more intuitively, the new site relieved pressure on the organisation’s contact centre.

Making the website the first line of contact

Notting Hill Genesis (formerly Genesis Housing) owns or manages around 33,000 homes across London and the east of England, and provides homes for around 100,000 people. Their website had grown organically over time and consisted of lots of relevant content for residents which wasn’t very easy to navigate. As well as redesigning the site to focus on the needs of users, the housing association also wanted to provide a quick, easy way for residents to report repair requests, mirroring the experience of calling the contact centre.

Providing user-centred design and a conversational interface

Kicking off the process with in-depth user research workshops, surveys and interviews, Manifesto redesigned the site’s information architecture, helping residents find answers to common queries, and retrieve essential documents with minimum effort. We also developed an innovative new feature: a conversational form for requesting repairs, which guides tenants towards the actions that will get them help fastest.

Speeding residents to critical content and needed repairs

Built in just 11 weeks on Drupal 8, it marks the first phase of Genesis Housing and Manifesto’s efforts to deliver improved digital experiences for the housing association’s customers. The ‘report a repair’ form, mirroring the experience delivered by the contact centre, but using fewer resources, successfully fielded over 21,000 interactions in the first month after launch, while important content saw significantly higher traffic and engagement.

How this helps us on your project

Manifesto’s experienced UX designers are comfortable taking complex customer requirements and translating them into straightforward, efficient user journeys. Our technologists are accomplished with a huge range of platforms and tools, helping them quickly deliver the features your users need, and start returning value to your organisation.