Dementia UK: Website Support

Dementia UK: Website Support 

 A burgeoning relationship built on trust: from taking over the support of Dementia UK’s core website to working together on their ambitious digital strategy.

How did we do it? 

After the launch of their new website in 2022, Dementia UK were in need of a new Support partner. As a small team, they needed someone who could not only take the important jobs of keeping a site safe, secure and up to date off their hands, but who could also understand their digital ambitions and provide relevant guidance and expertise when needed.  This brief was the perfect fit for Reason Digital and our Support team: a diverse group of engineers who could own the day-to-day running of their WordPress site and who could also call upon the skills of the wider team of strategists, user experience specialists, designers and project managers to support as required. 

First Steps

The first step was to conduct an in-depth technical, analytics and accessibility audit of their website. The team’s understanding of the platform, its challenges, and any immediate steps to improve were shared with the Dementia UK team, which meant they had a clear action plan from the beginning.  

The website was then under a Time & Materials contract for 6 months, to allow both teams to adjust to the new partnership, and for Reason to get a full understanding of the website they were to manage. During this time, we tackled the backend of the website and its performance: we reviewed and simplified the code and configuration, reduced the size of their database, and gave Dementia UK the access they needed to be able to manage some of their own digital tools, such a plug ins. 

After this initial review period they were brought under an Assurance Contract, which means we took responsibility for the site’s ongoing health and management under a fixed annual fee. We got to work setting up the access we needed to support the website, its hosting and development pipeline. With a seamless transition, the site stayed live throughout, meaning the organisation could continue to support its service users while the work to bring them under our wing happened in the background. 

Continuous Improvement for consistency

Throughout this work, Reason wanted to ensure Dementia UK had full ownership of their own website, including the backend, code repo and hosting. This means that we manage it on their behalf, but they have permanent access to their own digital estate – a working relationship based on trust. 

With the fundamentals in hand, it became clear that there could be a roadmap of strategic improvement and additions to the suite of Dementia UK websites. A Continuous Improvement (CI) package was immediately implemented: this is a rolling, Agile roadmap of improvements, with Dementia UK able to access the expertise of the entire Reason Digital team. The budget that has been left over from their initial contract with us was rolled into the CI project, meaning no time or money was lost in the switch. 

Crucially, they’ve had the same Project Manager throughout, meaning none of the details and nuance of Dementia UK’s digital plans were lost. 

The Result:

Once the website was under Reason Digital’s Support, Dementia UK saw an almost immediate improvement in their workload; previously time-consuming, manual tasks such as plug-in updates were automatically looked after, and the whole Dementia UK team knew that they could contact a real, named person should anything ever go wrong – and expect a prompt response. On a new hosting platform, the website’s speed improved (vital for search and SEO) and they were no longer plagued with unnecessary site downtime or a list of support tickets going unanswered.  

Aware of Reason’s strategic consultancy approach from the very beginning, and after a year of successfully working with Support, Dementia UK is now embarking on some new and exciting strategic projects with us. So far, we have worked on bringing additional sites under Assurance, providing research and user experience insight into their Young Dementia Network, and working with their internal and external teams on new branding for their core site. 

They have also participated in our AI Workshops, where we armed them with the right, relevant knowledge to address AI in their own strategy and to speak confidently to their internal teams and external partners about what they will need in this growing area of digital transformation.  

With the vital work of supporting those affected by dementia, we are delighted to work with Dementia UK as a trusted partner; we can’t wait to see what’s next.