Case study: Atomicity creates beautiful new website for award-winning charity | Atomicity Digital

Company overview

Based in the heart of rural Wealden in East Sussex, Rotherfield St Martin (RSM) is an award winning, community-led charity, primarily supporting older people within the parish of Rotherfield and surrounding areas. A higher than average older population combined with poor transport links and reduced access to services inherent with a rural community, RSM provides a vital lifeline to its 220+ members. Services include a volunteer driver service as well as a drop-in centre for the community to enjoy coffee, cake, borrow books from the extensive library and take part in over 15 different clubs and activities.

The challenge

Following a re-brand earlier in the year (also performed by Atomicity 😎), RSM were looking for a new website to reflect just how far they had come as an organisation in the last 14 years. The original website hadn’t been updated for a number of years which had resulted in out-of-date information and a dated aesthetic - off-putting to potential donors, grant makers, and most importantly, didn’t reflect the bright and vibrant nature of the charity’s members, volunteers and staff.

Our solution

During the earlier re-branding process, we’d learnt a lot about the charity, what their objectives and ambitions are for the coming years. This formed a great basis from which to develop some sketches and mock-ups of the site. The charity had a good range of professional media assets (video, stills etc.) that to date, weren’t being showcased as well as they could be, and in some cases weren’t public-facing at all.

With this in mind, we started on the homepage with a full page background video (an edited version of a wonderful video by Anna Sills), highlighting just some of great work RSM undertakes. The video is followed by a series of ‘cards’ outlining six ways in which RSM addresses challenges faced by lonely older people in the Rotherfield-area. At a later stage, these could link to related content with specific examples in news or blog-type pages.

During some early meetings with RSM, it became clear that the statistics just had to be called out on the website. A huge number of cakes, scones, volunteer drives and cups of tea are baked, driven and sipped every year, so we’ve captured this in a fun, graphical way that we’re sure will increase year-on-year!

The homepage continues with clear calls-to-action (volunteer, join as a member, donate); a carousel for supporter logos; contact details and social media links in the footer.

Further work also included portrait photography and editing for team head shots. They say never work with children or animals, however RSM’s Chief Meeter and Greeter, Badger, was a joy to photograph and very well behaved 😄.

Some headshot portraits of the RSM team

The results

A completely redesigned, mobile-friendly and responsive website
Based on WordPress, the website was built so that it can easily be updated and maintained by RSM staff
Focus on aesthetics and mobile readiness to increase engagement from volunteers, members and grant-makers

See the completed website here

RSM homepage screenshot — Screenshot from RSM homepage, featuring fullscreen video

What our client says

“We can now at last promote our charity with confidence, safe in the knowledge that our website presents our work professionally and totally encapsulates everything that we do. The concept and design totally fits our sector and is accessible to all.”

Vicky Cheeseman, Charity Manager, November 2018

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