Leeway Launch New Website

Those of you who regularly follow Leeway on social media will have seen last week that we announced the launch of our brand-new website. The new design is the result of many months of hard work and we were delighted to finally be able to share it with you. 

The decision to develop a new website came about having carried out a full review of our existing site. During that review, we identified a number of areas where we felt improvements could be made. These included: 

• Clunky Layout: The layout of the old website was very ‘clunky’ and difficult to navigate. Users looking for information about our individual services, fundraising or volunteering for example, would often have to navigate through two or three menus before locating the information they required. 
  
• Wordy: Even once a user had actually found the page they needed, they were often confronted by a large amount of text. We felt that this could be better presented by breaking up the text and through the use of graphics and icons. 
  
• Female Focussed: The website was predominantly targeted at females. Whilst women make up a significant proportion of the people we help, our services go much further and we wanted to reach out to other demographics.
  
• Dated Design: The final reason for updating the website was its dated design. Our previous website was published almost three years ago, and in that time online trends have changed and we felt it was time for a refresh.

How Does the New Website Differ?

We hope you will all agree that the new website design addresses many of the issues listed above. To do this we have made a number of changes, including:

A Modern Design

As well as introducing more images into the website, the new design also makes better use of colour, white space and infographics. We think this helps to break up the content and makes it much easier to read.

Jargon Free Content

We’ve reviewed the content used on the website. Complex jargon and abbreviations have been simplified and where possible we have tried to use plain English throughout. We hope this will make the content easier to understand – particularly for those people who may not have English as their first language.

More Information About Our Services

We were very keen to reach out to children, young people, men and the LGBT community who may not previously have been aware of our support services. Our new Help & Support page features information about all of the support services we offer – in easy to follow sections.

We are delighted that the feedback we have received so far has been incredibly positive and on the whole users have found the new website much easier to use. We are always looking to make further updates though, so if there are any areas which you feel could still be improved, please let us know!

Leeway is an independent, Norfolk-based domestic abuse charity. If you are experiencing domestic abuse, or have concerns about someone else, call our support line on 0300 561 0077 for confidential advice.