JRHT Housing Trust

Charitable Housing asociation

About

Established more than 110 years ago by Joseph Rowntree, JRHT (Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust) is a sustainable housing association that manages a total of about 2,620 homes, spread across the North East of England.

JRHT provides high quality and affordable homes in well managed communities prioritising those in greatest need.

The problem

Website is outdated, JRHT needs to re-position its brand as a modern, marketing leading housing and care provider while delivering a high-standards accessibility experience for not web-savvy users.

The approach:

Stakeholders interviews

to define objectives and timeline while hearing the staff point of view on current situation

(ej: timeline and defining a phase 1 and phase 2 prioritising objectives)

User interviews

some research came directly from JRHT being their community available for interviews and able to give feedback early

Workshops

both for competitive analysis and benchmarking and later for design brand refresh

Providing housing, community services and care to those in needs

Insights from JRHT

There are 4 main themes to the site:

Marketing – care homes and shared ownership properties

Resident services - repairing and maintenance

Resident engagement – community building, news and events

Corporate/required information – about

Analytics show people visit the site to:

1 – look for housing

2 – find a job

3– try to contact JRHT

The site is difficult to use

  • There’s a lot of content that nobody reads

  • Resident services need improving (both online and offline)

  • Digital confidence is mixed, so offline channels remain important

JTRHT

“Our end users are generally older (60+), or accessing our site in a state of distress. The new site therefore needs to be clear, intuitive and easy to use. We know a new website isn’t magic, but want it to help us be more user-centred. ”

JRHT

“Our internal users have a range of digital skills and limited time. The CMS needs to be easy to update, fit in with JRHT’s social media”

Competitive analysis and benchmarking workshop

UX Concepts testing

Low-fi interactive prototype tested for content, UX and layout investigation

Community - residents want to see themselves represented in the website, by showing what the communities do, such as events

Clear and easy - information needs to be found quickly, so it should be seen easily. This links to accessibility, as text size and imagery were mentioned

The people and the organisation - residents are interested in the organisation They need to know of upcoming changes and how it impacts them.

Communication - residents want to know what is going on, but can often miss notice boards (if there even are any notice boards left!)

Digitally excluded - while the focus here is the website, around 40% of residents may not have a device to access the internet. This should be considered when adding any updates or content to the website.

Copy matters

““I’m never absolutely sure who says it’s
affordable, what’s the criteria? Not affordable to me.””
— User interview

Brand workshop

Rebranding and photography direction

Starting from logos main colour, defining a more modern and vibrant palette for primary and secondary colours.

Photography direction: inclusive imagery where people are enjoying everyday life at JRHT, no looking directly at the camara.

Design iconography and style simple and clean with a touch of colour, high contrast palette and clear descriptive text supporting icons.

The result

  • Usability testing confirming brand refresh is welcomed with enthusiasm while design is clear and easy actionable

  • Users are appreciating contact information at a high level, easy to find now

  • Section for news and events shows users engagement

  • Designers and developers managed a zero bugs launch (yeah!)

  • New interactive gallery for house product page

  • Consistency of brand and imagery across site

  • Website is fully responsive and accessible

JRHT top rating – 1st place for the most accessible Housing Association website

The new website was launched in December 2022. In January, JRHT were awarded the top rating of 1st place for the most accessible Housing Association website by the Silktide Index. 

The Silktide Index is used to evaluate the web accessibility of worldwide organisations from both public and private organisations. Each organisation is assigned a score based on their level of compliance with the globally recognised standard for web accessibility, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). 

“I am really pleased that the JRHT website received top ranking for accessibility.”

Daniel Wigglesworth, Head of Digital Products for Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Other projects

More projects to come, stay tuned!