CASE STUDY

The Royal College of Midwives

Supporting the national organisation for midwives in the UK with a major website redesign and rebuild.
Hero graphic RCM

Client

The Royal College of Midwives

Sector

The Situation

The Royal College of Midwives and its sister brand, MIDIRS, needed two brand new websites after experiencing difficulties with the user experience and design limitations of their existing content management system. A final costly update to this software was the last straw, prompting them to search for a new website developer who could meet their needs.

The RCM and MIDIRS websites needed:

  • Integration with a complex CRM, with instant updates and data retrieval
  • Payment integration for new members
  • Seamless passing of users between their RCM memberships, MIDIRS subscriptions and e-learning platform
  • Staff access and enhanced backend user experience
  • Interaction with the MIDIRS database, a separate platform cataloguing resources and data from peer-reviewed journals and academic institutions
  • Conditional paywalling of information on members-only pages
  • Mapping of RCM institutions, staff contact details and relevant activist information so the RCM’s trade union function can be accessed by users around the world
  • Showcasing events, press releases, blogs, videos, user content, government advice notes, downloadable resources and so much more
  • A transformed navigation to allow time-poor members to very quickly find what they are looking for
  • Design flexibility to help present content from stakeholders and teams across the organisation in an engaging way
  • Improved SEO to present the website homepage as high as possible on Google and encourage more members to join

What we did

PLMR developed an entirely new interface between the RCM and MIDIRS websites, their CRM and the i-learn platform allowing dynamic data to pass seamlessly between these systems in as efficient a way as possible.

In a few short months the team provided:

  • A comprehensive overhaul of the site’s design and styling, bringing it into line with the brand guidelines established by the organisation
  • A full migration of the MIDIRs website into the RCM’s website, allowing content to pass between the two, unifying the process of sharing news, events and updates between these two entities
  • A new navigational structure that radically simplified the way data was stored and managed – this made the website significantly easier to use across mobile, table and desktop
  • A revolutionised joining form which honed the process down to one single set of actions – this cut down the amount of time it took users to join the organisation and automatically set them up with a new i-learn, MIDIRS and CRM entry as one automated action (saving hours of backroom time for RCM staff)
  • An all-new interactive map function showcasing RCM branches across the UK, complete with dynamic data about local activists and research in every region
  • A user-friendly search function that allowed data from across both sites to be found by users quickly and efficiently without the need for external searches
  • An additional brand-new conference microsite in our new styling and branding, allowing users to give us feedback on how the site was progressing in a way that never disturbed the live site
0 %
Increase in users visiting the website after just one week
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Increase in the number of pages users visited in a single session after one month
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Increase in engagement time from users after one month live

The Result

The RCM team were delighted with the results, with positive feedback being sent in from midwives and staff at every level of the organisation.

Add PLMR to your contacts

PLMR’s crisis communications experience is second to none, and includes pre-emptive and reactive work across traditional and social media channels. We work with a range of organisations to offer critical communication support when they are faced with difficult and challenging scenarios.