Who’s Involved?

The Geoscience Energy Society of Great Britain team, the Governing Council and third party suppliers

What was Needed?

GESGB were planning to replace their existing website which manages membership, community, messaging, events as well as providing educational content.

“We try to inject some fun into the brand. Want people to feel a part of GESGB not a member.”
“GESGB is somewhere people can share ideas.”

The project was to identify what functionality was needed, potential improvements that could be offered by existing 3rd party suppliers and to create a clear requirements document with roadmap.

Any work that would be needed to be completed before the new website project could begin.

“The [website scoping] project is about everything. The website is the only place people can
go to, so everything needs to be reflected.”

Ethos

The consensus from our meetings is that GESGB is, and should be seen as, a community, somewhere for networking, and a place where friendships are built.

The company wanted to update its brand to appeal more to younger graduates in the industry as well as those who are well established.

Memberships

A big part of the project was to investigate why some members were not engaging often with the site.  Why were they missing out on some aspects that come with their membership?

Many of the members attend events but it was tricky to find an event that specifically appeals to an individual visitor.  Some work needed to be done on the user experience and encourage some of the lighter users of the site to get the most out of it.

How could they better reach current and potential members without relying on social media and email.

Events

As the company has grown, some of the 3rd party event software suppliers were not providing a smooth solution.  Staff were having to do things manually or repeat tasks in multiple places.  We were able to speak directly to the suppliers to ascertain if this was expected or if it was something that needed configuring either on their end or on our client's.

Having an understanding of how APIs work, we were able to push the suppliers for concrete answers and it did turn out that in one case, the supplier had been giving our client incorrect information.

Resources

Having good indexing and search is key to enabling visitors to find good information.  Knowing that this is an issue is clear but how to address it is where we come in.
 

The Outcome

We created a detailed document outlining what there current site needs, what APIs need attention and guidance on how to create a site that is easy to navigate and delights their visitors.

More research into what members and potential members want is key to being successful.

GESGB were left with a clear plan of action and information on options with the understanding of what benefits or challenges there might be for each choice.