Beat SCAD is, in their words, a charity from the heart, and for the heart.
The UK charity, which aims to support those who have been diagnosed with Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, was founded after 3 survivors met online after experiencing unexpected heart attacks.
Five years after the charity's official launch, the team – run entirely by volunteers – began discussions to refresh their website. In February 2024 those talks became a reality.
Trustee and co-founder of Beat SCAD, Debbie Oliver, talks to Eonic Digital about why the team felt it was time for a website refresh and how it is helping to spread the word about Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection.
When did your original website launch?
"2015. It was originally built by me in WordPress with the help of some my work colleagues."
Why did you decide to refresh the site?
"The site was looking a bit tired. It had evolved over time and become very text heavy. There was a lot of information and we needed to rationalise it. The menus also didn’t make sense.
"There was a lot of white space and we found the WordPress themes didn’t offer the design flexibility we needed. We also needed help identifying the type and style of images to use."
"We also needed to speak to different audiences using language that would be understood by both healthcare professionals and patients."
What did you want to achieve?
"We wanted the website to be trusted, informative, reassuring, supportive, hopeful, inspirational and provide resources."
What limitations were you experiencing with the WordPress site?
"We did not have eCommerce functionality for our online shop. We used an online store platform that was separate from the website. We also had a database of patient information, and we wanted the platforms to be more integrated."
What improvements did you want to see?
"Better navigation for our audiences, bringing together information to improve the user journey and improving the calls to action, particularly for fundraising."
How did our Discovery sessions help with the project?
"We had already put together a website brief as our starting point. The Discovery sessions clarified things for us and pulled up points that we hadn’t previously considered. It was also good to talk about design elements such as the colour palette, on which we couldn’t give direction."
How is the new website being managed?
"Still by a team of 1 (me!). Trevor and his team are on hand to provide support, whether that is to remind me of a process or help with more technical issues."
Is the website bringing the desired results?
"We are now reaching the right audiences. We also have a better idea of how many of our leaflets are being downloaded thanks to the reports we can generate in the system."
What’s next for Beat SCAD online?
"We are now talking to Dov about monitoring the performance of the website. Now our sections are right we will add extra pages, expand our FAQs as the research finds more answers and include more video content.
"We’ve got the basics right with the functionality. Now it’s time to build on the content."
What did we get right?
"One of the good things about Trevor, Luke and everybody on the team was they were happy to accommodate meetings when our team of volunteers were available.
"The team gave us lots of ideas, explained some of the more technical things in layman's terms and were always very responsive to our queries."
Final thoughts...
"We’ve had a great reaction to the new website, including praise for the clear and easy navigation, the way the content is set out so it’s clear and not overwhelming, the section for healthcare professionals and the overall design. And we’ve had loads of people downloading documents and ordering leaflets and other products from the shop.
"So we wanted to say a massive thanks to Trevor and his team for all their hard work, flexibility working within the time restrictions we’ve had due to day jobs/other commitments, and patience explaining some of the more techy elements.
"From the Discovery process to the final product, it’s been a pleasure working with the team at Eonic.Digital and we look forward to continuing to work together to improve the site further."
Trevor's project takeaways
"Non-profits often need a slightly different approach when it comes to websites. It’s not all about profit motive – their needs are more complex and diverse. They have a wider range of possible audience for the website. It makes for a more interesting project.
"The team at Beat SCAD have been lovely to work with, they’ve got really good motivations and that helps us to do our best work."