An activity within the immersion phase has been to pull together a list of organisations and other charities to review their digital estates based on criteria and the market.

Looking at Macmillan Cancer Support, Cancer Research UK, Prostate Cancer UK, CoppaFeel and NHS. Identifying recurring themes and based on criteria such as navigation, information architecture and also against some of the items highlighted in our accelaterors such as communities, and research and campaigning.

Here’s some of the top level points that were identified as part of this:

Mobile

Organisations who have invested in testing their content (e.g. NHS, Macmillan) optimise for written content and link placement, and try to reduce other distractions (e.g. call-to-action buttons, images, videos)

This alleviates users’ frustrations with items that are competing for attention, rather than serving the journey. “Going back to basics” can summarise the approach, but it’s yet to be picked up by all organisations.

Features & services

The most common services across all competitors are online assistants and chatbots, some are only activated on mobile devices.

CoppaFeel stands out with the “Self-checkout” journey which acts as an online assistant that offers personalized guidance and reminders.

Communities

Accessing communities online vs. offline is balanced; while all competitors host an online forum, they also offer alternatives for more localised support groups.

Even if the pandemic migrated most of the community online and made it more accessible, there still seems to be demand for face-to-face interaction that are promoted on websites (e.g. Pancreatic Cancer UK’s support groups search).

What have you seen?

We’d really like to hear from you in the comments section if there’s been a standout site or website feature that you’ve interacted with that you think would be useful for this project.