Project overview
Stonewall approached us to relaunch their website on a more robust, functional CMS and user-friendly UI - and support them in a content audit to streamline the website. The previous system was slow and difficult to work with. Over time, the website had grown and was in need of rationalistation.
They asked us to take this project forward to deliver a modern, structured CMS and website to help position the charity as a thought leader in its field.
Stonewall was careful to include feedback from across the organisation and its stakeholders in rethinking how the content should be structured. Getting the language and positioning right was an important task for a global charity advocating for LGBTQ+ rights.
The technical migration would involve large-scale exports of content and data, reorganisation of those assets into a coherent framework, and automated imports to handle the upload of content, much of it built up in the charity’s 35 years of operation.
Rolling out a brand refresh
Following the successful re-launch of Stonewall’s website, the organisation approached us to implement a full brand refresh across the site.
The objectives
- To deliver a simple, organised and modern backend system. It was critical that staff could easily add and manage content, ensuring it was logically structured and visible in the right places
- Implementing the re-design brought the site in line with Stonewall’s brand refresh, providing a consistent and engaging experience across all content and regions.
The challenges
- Extremely complex IA. Stonewall’s previous CMS needed rethinking and optimisation. Migrating it into a new, sensible setup meant a huge amount of work exporting, cleaning up, and reimporting data so the team could keep creating content while we built the new system. Drawing on our extensive experience with Drupal migrations was critical here, enabling us to automate refreshes throughout the project!
- Amalgamating three sites into one. England, Scotland, and Wales each had their own site and were managed by different teams - this had created some SEO issues. We ran a deep and comprehensive technical SEO audit, tackled canonicalization issues, remapped all the content, and built a clear strategy for how everything would fit together without losing search visibility. We consolidated the regional sites to make their website management (and SEO) more efficient.
- Preserving custom code and UI. Stonewall had built bespoke features and to fill gaps in their old system. We ported these critical elements into the new platform while making it robust enough that they no longer needed to create their own workaround code.
- Coordination: This wasn’t a project we could deliver in isolation. It relied on close, ongoing collaboration with Stonewall’s internal team to make sure timings, tasks, and responsibilities all lined up.
The discovery process
We kicked off the project with our tried-and-tested approach, starting with a full assessment of the situation, across design, technical setup, project management, and SEO. That gave us the clear big picture of what needed to be done and in which order.
From there, we created a living project document that captured every detail, and validated it with Stonewall’s stakeholders to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. With everyone aligned, we could architect a clear way forward.
CMS migration
We migrated everything from Drupal into Craft CMS, automating as much as possible so content could be refreshed throughout the build. This meant Stonewall’s team could carry on publishing on the old site without derailing the migration. To keep things stable, we ported their existing UI, along with the custom code behind it, into the CMS.
Redesign implementation
A few months after the migration was complete, Stonewall undertook a brand refresh and asked us to align the site within a very short timeframe. This brought consistency across their digital estate and ensured the most public-facing part of their organisation matched the look and feel of their wider comms and marketing.
Throughout both projects we worked hand-in-hand with their digital team, sharing progress, hitting milestones, and getting sign-off step by step to keep everything transparent and on track.
The end result
A CMS that’s incredibly secure, modern, and simple to use. New staff can be onboarded quickly, content is easy to find, and the system now fully supports Stonewall’s work. It also serves as a reliable internal reference point for comms and content, with processes and hosting designed for maximum security and efficiency.
Our implementation of the new design gave the site a fresh look ensuring the organisation’s public face is consistent across all communications. On top of that, Stonewall has achieved a significant reduction in maintenance and running costs, allowing them to divert more funds toward much-needed causes, where it counts.
The feedback
Stonewall were delighted with the outcome. Their digital team described the new CMS as 'easy to use and logically structured’, while the consistency across regions and content types has been a huge win, their staff can now manage content without always needing to call in external help.
Perhaps most importantly, the relationship between our team and theirs was a genuine highlight. Working closely with their digital lead and the rest of the internal team made the project a success from start to finish.
“LuckyTurn were professional, responsive, and solution-focused. They guided us through a full and complex site migration and strengthened our SEO strategy with huge improvements. The team frequently went above and beyond, and I’d recommend them to anyone.” George Allabaster - Senior Digital Delivery Officer
