St Georges, University of London: planning a digital transformation
St George’s, University of London is the UK’s only full medical university based entirely within a hospital setting. At the end of 2016, their new leadership team knew that a website review was needed. But the desire to do this came hot on the heels of a revamp of the visual look and feel of the site only a year earlier.
Stakeholder engagement and alignment to user needs and motivations would therefore be key. Pickle Jar Communications initially conducted a phase of stakeholder consultations and light-touch reviews for St George’s. This enabled us to formulate an approach and project plan for a website and intranet redevelopment project that would truly deliver a return on investment and not miss important work packages, opportunities or stakeholder needs.
We were then commissioned to conduct a thorough content audit of the external website and intranet, a competitor analysis, and a comprehensive package of audience research incorporating a website pop-up survey, range of online surveys for different audiences, focus groups, telephone interviews and website user testing. We translated the research findings into comprehensive audience demographic and motivational personas and user journeys.
Informed by these insights, we developed a content strategy for St George's. This included a content model, structured content plan, substance and editorial vision, information architecture and governance process. With the recommendation to create one site in the future, incorporating the current website and internal portal, we have created a vision for a site where content is connected and shared across the site to achieve an enhanced, helpful experience for audiences and greater efficiency for editors.
We also supported the in-house project team with their project communications and roll-out, presenting the project outcomes to a staff open meting and leading a workshop with the communications and marketing team to embed the user-focused approach to content planning and creation.
Our work has resulted in the production of a CMS and web design agency procurement brief to bring this vision to life.