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To show that Welsh Athletics were ready to support their athletes and members to the next level, they needed a new website that put the users first.

As the governing body of athletics in Wales, Welsh Athletics needed to reflect that they were a modern membership organisation that could cater to the needs of their athletes – especially when this includes over 9,000 registered athletes and more than 95 active clubs. With so many looking for information and advice, they needed one place where it was readily available.

Welsh Athletics Logo
Welsh Athletics website on a macbook
Welsh Athletics Female Runner

The Challenge

While there was already a website in place, it was showing signs of its age and wasn’t fit for the future of athletics development in terms of functionality and user experience.

Going forward Welsh Athletics needed a site that not only looked fresh but could also offer bilingual functionality, personalised content, seamless user journeys, and positioned them as a sports body leader – which is where we stepped in to help.

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Mobile Mockup - Welsh Athletics
Female WA Athlete
Javelin thrower
Business Cards

The Solution

Due to the number of audiences that depend on Welsh Athletics, the obvious starting point was one of discovery. Because of this, we worked with them to understand exactly what they needed. To ensure we were on the right track we organised tailored focus groups with staff, senior management, athletes, clubs, coaches and parents. This deep insight gathering enabled us to develop sketches, wireframes, and a sitemap that matched the user’s needs and expectations, whilst signposting each audience type to relevant content.

Next, we reviewed their branding guidelines and set about revitalising them which included extending the colour palette, providing stand out fonts, and new messaging, based on the conversations and focus groups we held. Additionally, we made the assets downloadable from a Media Centre so that they can easily be used for promotions at club level. With such a stand-out and unique brand, we recommended WA trademark their logo and assets to protect the brand and cement their authority in the sector.

Once we were confident that we had gathered and documented all of the requirements, and we had developed the branding assets, we were able to move onto the website. This led to us designing and developing a fully responsive and bilingual website that would enable the user to personalise their experience, meaning that the content displayed would be relevant to them.

The CMS also worked as a collaborative tool so that a range of users from across the organisation could create, edit and submit content for approval – streamlining the approval process and allowing a clear picture for all involved.

We also built upon a framework with the future in mind, by defining a clear understanding of the objectives for upcoming phases.

What’s next

Thanks to the new website and inclusion of clear user journeys, Welsh Athletics saw an incredible increase in sessions, session duration and returning users, as shown below.

  • Bounce Rate decreased by 13%
  • Increase in pages per session by 17%
  • Increase in average session duration by 4%.

Returning Users:

  • Bounce Rate decreased by 8%
  • Increase in pages per session by 14%
  • Session Duration increased by 4%.
Colleagues discussing work

WebBox took a consultative approach that meant our new website is so much more than a great looking site. It does everything our various user groups need it to, and it will be a core part of our engagement strategy going forward. We are delighted with the results and were really impressed with the process WebBox used to get under the skin of our brief and deliver a fantastic site. The team have been excellent to work with and shown real interest in our work and a genuine desire to help us sell our sport through our brand.

Rob Sage, Communications & Marketing Manager, Welsh Athletics

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