For the second interview in my new series taking an in-depth look at how different charities are approaching content, I was lucky enough to talk to Ruth Stokes from Action for Children. Ruth is doing amazing work on Parent Talk, an online family support service. I’m a long-term fan and admirer of Ruth’s work, and in particular her writing on Medium. We talked about how content design affects organic search, prioritisation as a small team on a tight budget, and more.
How did you get started in content design?
I got into content design after nearly 10 years working as a copywriter and journalist, including as an online editor for The Guardian. I started working in content design with the agency Scroll, for clients like The Environment Agency, after another content designer recommended me. From there I got a freelance role with Llibertat as Content Design Lead on the first phase of a website restructure project at Southampton University. Then I moved to be a freelance Content Design Lead on a mental health website launch at Action for Children. That led to a full-time job at the charity, where I worked on the main website before moving into the Service Design Team and working on our online parenting support service, Parent Talk.
What does content design look like at Action for Children?
Content design is a small team and sits in the Service Design Team at Action for Children, where we focus on building user-centred services that support young people and parents around the UK. I’ve worked in a few different roles while at the charity and I have introduced content design on a number of projects. We’ve recently started sharing more of our methods and evidence of impact and having conversations as part of the beginnings of a digital transformation project, so there may be an opportunity here to implement content design processes more widely.
What steps did your organisation take to start implementing content design practices?
“Having a robust content design practice in place on Parent Talk has made a real difference to the quality of advice we’re offering parents and carers on the service.”
We first introduced content design practices for a small mental health support website launch. After we were able to show some successes with this, we were also able to introduce a user-centred approach to our main website redesign, which was a huge piece of work.
But we’ve only really managed to embed content design methods in a meaningful way since introducing it to our online parenting support service, Parent Talk. When I moved onto the service I created a data-led approach to content, workflows, criteria for publication, style guidelines, governance and sign off processes, and introduced a tool to collect user feedback on content. We’ve developed strong relationships with our subject matter experts and work closely with the service designers and product manager in our team to run user testing. We work hard to improve accessibility and inclusivity. Having a robust content design practice in place on Parent Talk has made a real difference to the quality of advice we’re offering parents and carers on the service. It’s also given us a clear framework to work from when consulting on other projects, such as our support service for young carers, Sidekick.
One of the reasons content design has been able to thrive in our team is because our Parent Talk lead and the former director of Growth and Service Design have worked hard to foster a culture of testing and learning, with the user at the centre.
Do you have any specific examples of how content design has improved user experience or engagement at Action for Children?
“In the year 2020/21, only 8% of our visitors found us through organic search — the majority found us through paid advertising. In 2023/24, 73% of our traffic came from organic search. ”
Parent Talk is an award-winning online support service for parents and carers that now contributes significantly to Action for Children’s reach. We use a feedback tool to collect data on whether people found our content useful or not. Since we started collecting user feedback on our content through the website in 2021 and making changes as a result, we’ve seen a significant increase in overall satisfaction.
Parent Talk doesn’t have a big advertising budget, so we need to work that bit harder to let people know we can offer support. One of the ways we do this is by using the language they’re using to find help online. We use data from search listening to understand what people need help with, and what words they’re using to describe their problem. In the year 2020/21, only 8% of our visitors found us through organic search — the majority found us through paid advertising. In 2023/24, 73% of our traffic came from organic search. This shows the impact of our content design approach on our services, both for parents and carers and the charity.
As the Digital Content Manager at Action for Children, I co-led on a redesign of our main website, where improvements to functionality, accessibility of content and user journeys resulted in an increase of donation conversion rate by 459% year-on-year after launch. It was the first time the organisation had taken a user-led approach to content and website journeys on this platform. We rewrote the whole website, ran user testing for a new information architecture, and introduced readability standards, for example. And we worked closely with teams around the organisation to understand the purpose of each page, who the user was for each section of the site, and how we might tackle some of the issues.
On one article about behaviour, which we rewrote based on feedback from users, satisfaction score increased from 3.6 out of 10 before the updates to 8.3 in the period after the updates. Obviously there will always still be room for improvement, but we now know that we’re doing a better job at giving people the support they really need. The feedback showed us that we’d underestimated the severity of the situation for a lot of people coming to the service for help with that topic, and we adjusted our content with this in mind.
What are some of the biggest challenges or misconceptions you’ve faced with introducing content design?
One of our biggest challenges is that we’re a small team working to a tight budget. We have a long list of things we’d like to work on and test to make the experience better for users, but we’ve had to get good at judging what we can address now and what we plan for later, based on workloads and funding. It means we prioritise hard when it comes to creating or updating content, and improving the website, always focusing on the most urgent thing. That can be hard when you’re working on a service supporting parents and carers who need help, because you want to do everything you can to make the experience as stress-free as possible!
How have you addressed these challenges, and what impact has this had?
“Sometimes we all have to step outside our official job descriptions and broaden our skillsets to get things done.”
In terms of prioritising and making sure we’re working on the most important thing, we use a mix of search data, social listening, information from our online chat service, and feedback from users to work out what people need help with most urgently. Our subject matter experts are really on-board with this approach, and feed in invaluable information about what people are needing support with on our online chat services.
For bigger development pieces, we work as a team to identify the most urgent thing to work on and what we can realistically achieve with the time and funding we have at a given time. Sometimes we all have to step outside our official job descriptions and broaden our skillsets to get things done. It’s not ideal, but probably typical of the sector, and is the only way we’ve been able to create and run the services we now have, including the award-winning Parent Talk.
As a team, we’re good at sharing when things are challenging and asking for support from each other to find solutions. We’re honest about the gaps in our knowledge and data, and think creatively about how to address this. We work together to identify areas for user research, and conduct and synthesise research to inform the content. Taking this approach has developed a solid team culture, where a testing and learning approach is supported and celebrated.
We also have a strong relationship with our tech partner, Super Being Labs. They’re the most responsive, knowledgeable and creative agency I’ve ever worked with. We couldn’t run or develop our services without them.
When it comes to communicating the meaning and benefits of content design, we’re currently having discussions about how to show rather than tell when evidencing impact. We’re looking at taking inspiration from Parent Talk’s chat function, where service visits have been helping people grasp the impact of the support offered in this way. At these service visits, we’ve been able to show the organisation and funders impact by taking them behind the scenes of the service and showing them the issues people are facing, feedback from users talking about how the chat service helped them, and case studies of how we’ve helped families tackle a challenge.
We’ve now got some strong data demonstrating the real impact content design can have, for the user and the organisation. We’ve also got a few other ideas for things we’d like to test in terms of how we might illustrate impact. But giving others access to the words of our users is already changing the way people understand the service, in a way that talking about it never has.
The next challenge for us as a team is how we do more of this for content and service design. We’re working on ways to share the user’s voice with colleagues, and will be documenting the results.
How do you see the role of content design evolving in the charity sector over the next few years?
The impact and effectiveness of content design has been illustrated by the public and private sectors, but I think the charity sector as a whole has some way to go to embrace content design in a way that will make a meaningful difference to users. There are some charities out there, like Scope and Shelter, that are doing brilliant work in this area and I’d love to see more following their lead. Given the growing evidence of impact within the sector and without, there’s a compelling case for content design to be adopted by more charities within the next couple of years as people see that there’s both a strong user benefit and business benefit.
What advice would you give to other charities that are considering adopting content design?
“Adopting content design is making an active choice to put your users’ needs first, and to invest in accessibility and inclusivity.”
It’s thinking about how those with low literacy access your content, whether someone under stress will successfully complete a sign-up form, or whether someone who has sight loss can use your website or service. In getting it right for these people, you make your content better for everyone.
It’s a content discipline where decisions are led by data and insights from the people you’re trying to speak to – which helps ensure that as an organisation, you’re always focusing on the most important thing and improving quality over time.
You can start small on a product or service, or a section or single journey on your website, and measure the results. Know what your aims are and how you’re going to track success. Take the mindset that it’s a process of learning about what works for your audience and what doesn’t. Collect feedback, analyse user data and iterate to improve your output. Share your results with others.
It may also be worth speaking to other charities and organisations that already have content design disciplines – maybe by attending events, watching webinars, or even asking for a chat – to hear how they approached it.
Ideally you want a plan for scaling over time but whatever the size of your team it’s absolutely essential you create robust processes and support the content designers to set up mutually respectful methods to collaborate with subject matter experts and other people (like researchers or analysts) who can support the work.
For content designers working under tight restraints or trying to introduce the practice, think creatively about how to get user data to support small-scale tests or developments on a particular project. For example, while you’d ideally have paid access to an SEO tool to help with search listening (and this is definitely something organisations should be investing in) you can get a little of the information you need from free versions. Do desk research to understand the challenges some of your users face, to give you a starting point. Map out what you already know about your users from how they’re using your website, product or service and where your assumptions are, to identify your gaps in knowledge. Then build from there.
Are there any books, online resources, or communities you would recommend to others looking to explore content design further?
Content Design by Sarah Winters and Rachel Edwards is an obvious starting place for getting to grips with the basics of what content design is and why it’s important.
Shelter has a nice guide to content design as part of its digital framework.
Follow blogs, newsletters or that talk about content design and UX – there are some really interesting conversations happening. The UX Content Collective, UX Collective on Medium and The Content Strategy Podcast from Kristina Halvorson are all good.
Monthly newsletters from organisations doing the work can be helpful – I like the ones from Scroll and Lauren Pope for keeping up with the latest discussions. Fighting Talk from Ettie Bailey King is a brilliant newsletter about accessible and inclusive communication.
Digital Charities runs a Slack Channel for non-profits, Content Design London runs The Content Club, which is a very supportive and knowledgeable Slack community for content designers. Lead with Tempo has a Slack community for content leaders.
