About Rewilding Britain

Rewilding Britain is a new and innovative organisation, with a goal to drive forward nature regeneration for the benefit of the climate, biodiversity and communities. Their message is urgent, yet hopeful. 

About the Rewilding Network

The Rewilding Network is at the core of their work. People working directly with nature, land owners and land managers, can join to connect with others, share knowledge and access funding to realise their ambitions. Members can access a wealth of fascinating and game-changing evidence and insight with a couple of clicks. 

However, the existing website navigation had grown organically over time, without input from users or a UX focus. This meant the navigation was misaligned with the priorities of the organisation and was hindering the change they knew they could make to nature and people. 

How we worked

Having already worked with the team for nearly a year on their social, email and content marketing, I felt confident championing an evidence based approach to their website refresh that followed content design principles.

In practice this meant: 

• Card sorting: For the main navigation of the whole website, I carried out an online card sorting exercise (with Optimal Workshop). We asked users to group together each webpage and then label that group. We then tested this new information architecture using Optimal Workshop’s Treejack tool. 

• User Interviews: In collaboration with the website manager and an external accessibility consultant, I guided user interviews with people representing target groups (such as land managers, government officials and the general public) and people facing specific accessibility challenges (visual impairment, colour blindness, ADHD and dyslexia). We asked them to carry out crucial tasks on the website and observed what went well and what was a challenge. I then analysed the findings to make recommendations. 

This resulted in: 

• Navigation redesign: The IA and therefore the main navigation menus were flattened and relabelled based on my analysis of the card sorting results, making them more intuitive and easier to use. This means users can now find more of the content they need and have a more satisfactory overall experience. 

• Content surfacing: I recommended existing content that supported users' understanding of the concept of rewilding, its real world impact and the organisation’s role was made easier to find. The organisation now appears more relatable to a general audience and more likely to inspire their support in public discourse or through monetary donations. 

• Audience targeting/ funnelling: Key content was overhauled based on the behaviour and goals we had observed from specific audiences. For example, we  were able to reduce friction for land managers wanting to join the network at the same time as demonstrating the benefit of the network to the public (and letting them know where they can visit to see it in action). 

• Internal influencing: Our research provided the digital team with clear user data to justify changes and make the case for resource allocation in the future.