Sarah Rughoonundon, digital lead, Bliss Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk

1. Digital first - the strategic
context for revitalising your
web presence
Sarah Rughoonundon – Digital Lead
Search Blisscharity

2. In the beginning…

3. In the beginning…
Bliss was founded in 1979 by a group of concerned parents who discovered that no
hospital had all the equipment it needed to safely care for premature and sick babies.
Determined to do something, they formed a charity to give babies the care they deserve.
Almost 40 years later Bliss has grown into the leading UK charity for the more than 95,000
babies born needing neonatal care every year.

4. What we had in place before our
website project started
• A strong and simple organisational strategy that placed digital at the centre of its success. This strategy was based on
a survey of 1000s of our supporters and beneficiaries as well as internal skills and priorities audit.
• Reach every baby born premature or sick: 95,000 babies.
• SMT leading from the front fully supported and embraced by our Board. This meant that every team was asking
themselves:
• How can better digital working help us to improve the support we offer to our beneficiaries?
• How can improved digital communications help us extend our reach?
• How can digital techniques and tools help us to save money and improve efficiencies?
• Champions across the organisation. Internal digital ways of working to create efficiencies. The phrase ‘digital first’.
• Because of the planning, because of the clear and simple strategy with digital at its heart and embraced by managers,
staff got really excited about digital. There was a buzz. Digital first meant people stopped printing. We got better video
conferencing. We submitted all our HR documents electronically.
• A few key people changed the way they did things and it spread – because there aren’t that many of us.
• Externally we launched a virtual event which raised more than double the target amount and was embraced by
supporters. We launched an e-learning platform for our volunteers that transformed the way we could deliver
resources and training. This is just a handful of things that were done but the changes meant that staff saw and
experienced the benefits of improving digital.

5. What we had in place before our
website project started
• The other thing we had – was a really, really rubbish
website.
• The key thing from all of this is that what really laid down
the foundations was from these four people - it was about
having digital embraced and expected from our SMT and
rooted into the strategy. Our experience is you don’t need
your chief executive to know about digital and to be an
expert but you need them to unquestionably believe in it
and trust and expect you as their staff to deliver it

6. You want what now?
So you know when you send out a brief,
which you’ve had to rush, you might
get a reaction like this from agencies
and understandably so….

7. You want what now?
So we took a lot of time crafting our brief. We knew we had a small budget for our expectations. We knew
we couldn’t accomplish everything and we HAD to prioritise. We knew that if we were really clear to a
digital agency about our expectations, we’d get a clear response.
• We did a lot of background work. We created goals for our website based on our strategy, and looked at
how these had performed in Google analytics over the past year
• We ran workshops with every team (being a small organisation makes this easy and very achievable). We
asked them what they needed from a new website and to get them thinking user first – we created user
journeys for the website audience that was applicable to their area of work. This made everyone feel like
they were important (and they were) and that they were part of the project.
• We ran a focus group with our parent panel asking them questions about their online browsing habits,
when they found info on our website useful, what they found frustrating etc.

8. You want what now?
There were two clear areas we had to focus on for launch.
• Creating a website people could navigate (the navigation on our old site was essentially non-existent)
• Creating a simple online donate process
We know our website is an ongoing ever evolving product and the biggest source of the information we
provide for parents, with the potential to reach far more than we can ever reach face-to-face. If they have
an amazing experience through our website initially, we then create that relationship where they then
become our supporters and fundraisers.
Everything else in our wish list was loosely mapped into a Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the website. And then will
come Phase 4 and so on.
But the crucial thing being, we focus on very specific areas at a time, based on information from users and
organisational needs and don’t try to do it all at once. And we are crystal clear about it so everyone knows
what we expect.

9. Creating relationships

10. Creating relationships
Key to our success was creating individual relationships with staff across the organisation and in a small
organisation – you can do this so easily.
I spent a lot of time talking to colleagues, listening to their needs / frustrations and keeping them informed
and updated because the website is a tool everyone across the organisation should have a vested interested
in. And in a small organisation, as you’ll know – you NEED them to because most likely they will be editing
and creating content for your website.
So I made the most of face to face or phone contact. I’d talk to people rather than email. We’d also give
regular updates for staff through lunch and learns, website editing training, as well as intranet and email
where needed.
What this meant when the project started (which took a flexible, iterative approach requiring constant
decision making about the design and direction) is that we could make decisions fast. And because everyone
felt so involved and like they owned it, I could go and chat to people at short notice and ask them to turn
things around. And they did. Amazingly so in a way I’ve never experienced before.

11. Creating relationships
The other key thing was the flat decision making structure. As long as I involved the right internal teams, we
didn’t need to go for sign-off from senior colleagues. We were trusted to get on with it. The project couldn’t
have functioned at the pace it did without that.
Back to that old rubbish website – that actually helped enormously as everyone was so frustrated with it – a
combination of the focus on digital and not being able to do anything on the old site – everyone couldn’t
wait for a new website.
Get it right and all of a sudden you have a huge digital team – because it is everyone, at different levels, but
everyone should have some digital in their role. That is achievable for small organisations.

12. Hooray!

13. Hooray!
Our new website went live on 23 April. On time. On budget. And we LOVED it. Because of all the elements
I’ve spoken about it was the smoothest website migration I’ve ever worked on. And because we kept our
expectations realistic and because we kept a flexible, iterative approach to the project, we also managed to
achieve so much more:
• A new online shop (through our fulfilment company using the style of our new website (this project
was on hold and deliberately delivered at the same time, even though staff had been waiting years for
it)
• The new CMS provides amazing functionality and creativity so we could make stories and parents’
voices much more prominent
• New map functionality
• And of course the key objectives - a simpler, intuitive navigation and simple donate process
So far the feedback has been fantastic. Our parent panel gave us overwhelmingly positive feedback, as has
an initial survey. We’ve got huge amounts of work to still to do and there’s much more to come but we have
a fantastic base to work from which is made possible because of our digital first business strategy alongside
trust for staff and realistic expectations.

14. 11 July 2018
London
#CCsmallcharity
Small charities
communications conference

15. Visit the CharityComms website to view
slides from past events, see what
events we have coming up and to
check out what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk