A charity site built to improve drop-off rates

Overview

ActionAid Ireland's website is how supporters learn about the work, follow campaigns and give. The brief was an overhaul of the site and its donation journey.

What I Noticed

The site had grown over time without a clear structure. Campaigns, publications and appeals competed for attention, and the navigation followed how the charity is organised, not how supporters think. And in a giving journey, every extra step or unclear option loses someone who had already decided to help.

What I Did, And Why

I restructured the sitemap around what supporters come to do (find a campaign, read something, give), not around internal departments. Why: someone ready to donate shouldn't need to understand the organisation chart first.

I redesigned the donation journey to cut friction and make the giving options clearer, like fewer steps, one-off versus monthly, clearer calls to action. A donation form is the most expensive place on a charity site to lose someone, so each field and each choice had to earn its place.

I designed a flexible subpage system and a publications layout instead of one-off pages, so the team can keep adding content without needing a designer. I also specified how the forms connect to the CRM, so what we designed is what got built and supporter data ended up where it needed to be.