April
Website design & launch
April came to us via recommendation looking for a website build. With branding already established, we were brought in to design the UX, content structure, UI and website.
Anti-design
Web projects can usually take advantage of the fact that most users will be familiar with how websites work. Click three lines in the top right corner of a webpage and you expect a menu to appear. If there’s a rectangular box beneath the words ‘Email address’, then you expect to type your email into the nearby box.
When designing for people aged 65+, you cannot rely on these assumed familiarities. In fact, after researching how April’s customer base interact with technology and websites, we realised we would need to abandon some of these established website ‘norms’, in order to provide mature users with the best experience.
16% increase in subscriptions attributed to the new website
​
Making the site Alzheimer’s and dementia friendly shaped the design of the site too. Context had to be given at all times for users who might get distracted or have short term memory problems. This would also serve to include a far wider audience than if we had structured the new site on the basis of just ‘savvy’ mature users.
Other accessibility features were needed as well. Contrast and copy size are easily adjusted to allow users to customise their experience; content is easily printable; navigation is visible at all times; and buttons and calls to action are explicit. We built a bespoke video player, with large, clear buttons helping users to pause and play the video content easily, whilst they could follow along with the instructions.
We also had to challenge the established wisdom regarding web users and attention spans. So while we typically assume users want short, snappy, bitesize chunks of copy, April’s more mature customers were quite happy to read long form content.
