Interrelate

Interrelate

Relationship services provider Interrelate engaged Luminary to take a deep dive into understanding how people use its online services, in preparation for a rebuild of its website.

Client:

Interrelate

Tagged:

Charities & not for profit

Who We Helped:

Quick stats

Minutes of customer interviews

Potential customers surveyed

Hours of workshops

Interrelate education courses

The challenge

Interrelate is a not-for-profit provider of relationship services, specialising in supporting parents and children. Its services include counselling, mental health and wellbeing support, family dispute resolution, mediation, relationship education, school programs, family violence support, and parenting support. 

People who rely on Interrelate’s services are often going through a difficult time, so the website needs to be straightforward and user-friendly. The organisation recognised that its existing site was not meeting that need as well as it could, which was adding to the burden of an already stressful time in people’s lives.

So Interrelate enlisted the aid of Luminary to undertake a deep discovery engagement to really drill down and understand who the primary users of the site were, their pain points, and how the site could be improved to better accommodate their needs.

Interrelate - online workshop with Miro board

What we did

The engagement kicked off with an immersion workshop involving a broad set of stakeholders from core business units. From this, Luminary ascertained that Interrelate’s digital vision was to:

  • increase traffic and conversion of services and programs to deliver business growth
  • improve digital-only service offerings 
  • reorganise school services, programs and books into one hub
  • offer programs at appropriate points throughout the client’s online journey, and
  • update the services booking process.

Following the initial onboarding phase, our team did an organisation-wide digital ecosystem review, including analysis of Interrelate’s strategic documentation, technology systems, digital marketing activity, and data analytics. This was synthesised with an analysis of competitor and comparator performance, customer research, and market and trend forecasting to provide a foundation for a future state roadmap.

The comprehensive discovery focused on seven key areas of impact: resourcing, SEO, content, strategy, customer segmentation, technology and data analytics (read more about our ‘seven pillars’ framework for discovery). The process involved more than 260 customer engagements – including research interviews, customer surveys and cardsorting, as well as 20+ hours of workshops across all workstreams.

The insights uncovered had far-reaching implications not just for Interrelate’s future website, but also for the broader operations of the organisation. 

Some of the key findings of the discovery process are outlined below.

SEO – There was a lack of keyword targeting throughout the site, with gaps between what people were searching for and what the site was delivering. Program-driven page names also meant that the content of pages was not always clear to users. Some terms that Interrelate should have been competitive for were ranking low. The analysis therefore identified a lot of ‘easy wins’.

Users – Five user types were identified: young adults (under 25), separation clients, referrers (e.g. case workers), teachers, and corporate partners (funding providers). We conducted interviews with all types of users, delving into how they were accessing the site, what it was like for them to work with Interrelate, and what their pain points were. Among the insights discovered were that clients strongly valued upfront transparency around the cost of services, that reducing the admin load of booking programs was critical for teachers, and that young adults and separation clients were facing delays of up to two weeks to book services due to the inefficiencies of the manual booking system. Overarching all of that, users were finding the site’s navigation confusing and struggling to find the content they needed.

Content – The brand voice on the site was very clinical, with an inconsistent depth of content. It was also not written with specific user types in mind, and pages were extremely content heavy.

Technology – Our technology audit identified a number of disconnected third party systems that would work much better if they were integrated, features of the CMS that were not being fully utilised, and search indexes that were not optimised to give the most relevant results.

Interrelate - appointment booking

Defining the future state

The outcome of the discovery exercise was a detailed digital strategy roadmap, which was presented to Interrelate in a final showcase. 

One of the highlights of the roadmap was a recommendation to create a customer portal that will vastly streamline the service booking process, enabling users to see a dashboard of all of their invoices, communications with service providers, and details of past and future appointments. The roadmap also suggests a far more efficient booking process for teachers who are responsible for organising school programs. 

The site’s information architecture has also been reimagined to reflect customer-research driven insights, with pages broken down to be more focused on specific topics. 

From a visual design perspective, recommendations include a visible progress indicator so the user can see how far they are through the journey of particular tasks on the site, and the removal of key identifiers on-screen to make users feel safer if they are in a position of vulnerability.  

The roadmap provides a comprehensive blueprint to inform the upcoming build of Interrelate’s new website, along with many recommendations that will improve the whole organisation’s ability to meet the needs of the people it serves.

In the words of Interrelate's Head of Social Enterprise and Business Development, Jared Ingle, "To fulfil our purpose of empowering people to thrive in their relationships, we need a user-friendly, engaging, and supportive digital presence. Our partnership with Luminary enabled us to evolve our digital transformation and prioritise the changing expectations our clients have. The Luminary team encouraged us to embrace digital through collaborative workshops, interviews, pulse checks, and presentations, and we are more productive, efficient, considered and have expanded our thinking – all thanks to the Luminary team."

Interrelate final showcase
This valuable discovery project with Luminary has shaped our future state service delivery model and uncovered many opportunities to improve the digital and overall experience of our clients. We are now strategically positioned to ensure equal access to our services for all people throughout Australia – enabling us to connect more vulnerable communities to our support services. I highly recommend Luminary as a strategic partner. Their experience, guidance, strategy, communication, and delivery is second to none.
Wellness Hub - Interrelate

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