Traditional Irish Horse Association Website
How I redesigned a horse breeder organisation’s website for a more memorable first-time experience
Project Overview
The Traditional Irish Horse Association (TIHA) approached me with a problem: people were coming away from the website without a clear picture of the purpose and value that the organisation offered.
Understanding
Once I understood their challenge, I began by learning the history of TIHA and exploring ways to communicate first-time readers before beginning a content-first approach to building the website.
I felt it was important for the first few sections of the site to give an accurate impression of the organisation’s primary purpose, and lead the user through a series of introductions to their past successes and future goals.
I felt it was important for the first few sections of the site to give an accurate impression of the organisation’s primary purpose, and lead the user through a series of introductions to their past successes and future goals.
Challenges
- The new site had to be easy to maintain as the committee did not have a dedicated IT support member.
- The site had 30+ pages despite not having a complex structure. An obvious improvement I could make would be to collate these into fewer pages for easier browsing.
- The site relied on a lot of stock and old imagery where they had an entire library of new photography work as yet unused.
Research
Working with the organisation to build personas of their regular audience and setting standard KPIs for average web traffic, I started to gather examples of their competitors.
There were also several options for a new platform, as the committee were unhappy with maintaining their Wordpress account, Wix, Squarespace and Weebly being the main alternatives. As they had just launched a new editor platform with a competitive pricing plan, I proposed Wix, to which they agreed.
There were also several options for a new platform, as the committee were unhappy with maintaining their Wordpress account, Wix, Squarespace and Weebly being the main alternatives. As they had just launched a new editor platform with a competitive pricing plan, I proposed Wix, to which they agreed.
Design
The nuts and bolts of putting together a cohesive website is a well-trod path. I myself prefer to use the atomic design process.
I started with typography, defining the heading and paragraph font pairing, adding a colour palette of primary and secondary hues matching the down-to-earth browns and greens of a countryside-centric organisation.
I then used those two to begin building tokens, which in turn lead to full components I can use to template the pages in Figma.
I started with typography, defining the heading and paragraph font pairing, adding a colour palette of primary and secondary hues matching the down-to-earth browns and greens of a countryside-centric organisation.
I then used those two to begin building tokens, which in turn lead to full components I can use to template the pages in Figma.
Feedback
Working closely with the TIHA members, the new text content was optimised with a few rounds of feedback from various committee members to make it more appealing to breeders looking to preserve a proud equestrian heritage. The process was much easier for them once a working prototype of the site was available, as they could understand the vision of the new layout.
Once we had run a remote handover session explaining how to maintain and update the new site, the clients thanked me, and hoped to work again in future.
The final result was a website that both the committee and audience could use much more easily: one which more effectively explained the organisation's goals, which users could more readily find the answer to any query they might have, and demonstrated a true love for the breed.
Their average number of pages viewed per user jumped with a 50% increase in unique users in the month following launch, with a 30% increase in average time spent on the site.
Once we had run a remote handover session explaining how to maintain and update the new site, the clients thanked me, and hoped to work again in future.
The final result was a website that both the committee and audience could use much more easily: one which more effectively explained the organisation's goals, which users could more readily find the answer to any query they might have, and demonstrated a true love for the breed.
Their average number of pages viewed per user jumped with a 50% increase in unique users in the month following launch, with a 30% increase in average time spent on the site.
