Water Harvest – Website Design and Development for water charity
About the project
WaterHarvest is a UK-based charity providing clean drinking water solutions for rural villages in India and Africa. They collaborate with local communities to help them learn and build the necessary infrastructure to collect, store, and clean rainwater for drinking.
We were briefed to re-design the charity’s website with a brief to create a clean, modern, and easily maintainable website and backend that can support WaterHarvest’s drive to modernise and build their online donations through increased content creation and media spend.
Design approach
We worked with the Water Harvest team and trustees to design a website that told their story. One that honours their contributions as a charity, celebrates the impact of donations, and helps make a real difference for the future of rural communities. Creating simple UX design and welcoming UI design, the new website communicates the transforming impact of the work that WaterHarvest does in these communities.
Our UX and design decisions were informed by research. We used existing Google Analytics and Hotjar data in combination with user interviews and surveys. The user research included existing donors and supporters and a broader target audience of younger people from the Indian and African diaspora in the UK. In addition, a thorough competitor review gave us insight into the types of content and messaging used by more modern/start-up charities working in similar areas.
The result is a site that is driven by understanding and empowerment through sustainable water for all. Creating space for WaterHarvest to make its brand voice known and clearly delivers a more legitimate and credible organisation to audiences.
Developing for success
The website is built on the WordPress 6.1 platform using our custom base theme, which uses Guttenberg blocks and the associated editor to provide the Water Harvest team with an intuitive editing experience while delivering strict control of the visual output on the website itself. Our base theme is optimised for PageSpeed and accessibility: it allows us to build out websites from a tried and tested set of components that are easily extensible for each project. We also use a minimal, standard set of best-in-class WordPress plugins to provide key features, including SEO management, analytics, and Mailchimp list integration. The Water Harvest team can add new projects, project updates, and new pages using a series of pre-configured templates to ensure consistency across the site experience.
We integrated the website with the Donorfy CRM platform to enable users to donate easily and securely. In addition, a Mailchimp integration was included to facilitate newsletter sign-ups and ongoing eCRM with donors and supporters.
Our pre-release testing process involved the test team checking the website across an agreed list of devices and browser versions for functionality and adherence to the original designs. Next, we conducted accessibility testing using a number of tools to check WCAG compliance, contrast compliance, and screen reader compatibility to ensure a good experience for visually impaired users.
We host the website on the WPEngine platform. Additionally, we provide ongoing support and maintenance to keep the website updated with the latest WordPress core and plugin versions.
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