The background
At the time of Baker’s centenary, its digital presence had to match the organisation’s position. The website features a wide and rapidly expanding amount of content, including information about its research programmes, laboratories and research platforms, clinical trials that are looking for participants, patient services, a Health Hub which includes fact sheets, explainers and recipes, and a continuous flow of news and reports on its impact.
That wide range is one of Baker’s strengths, but it also meant that navigating and discovering information became more difficult. The platform had to be updated in such a way that it respected its 100 years of history and at the same time provided the next generation of researchers, patients, and supporters with a modern and trustworthy place in which to get involved.
The challenge
For an institute funded by research grants, partnerships, and philanthropy, the website matters. It must build credibility with the research community, connect patients with clinical services and trials, and inspire donors. Each audience arrives with different goals and varying levels of familiarity.
Baker needed to:
- Update the visual appearance and user experience so that the website reflects the quality of the Institute’s science.
- Ensure that each group of readers can locate the research, health information, and programmes that are relevant to them without needing to know the organisation’s internal structure.
- Upgrade the platform underneath it to version 10.4 of Sitecore to lower the technical risk and to secure a stable basis for future development.
- Present a search function that can deal with a large and diverse content library, including technical research material as well as patient-friendly health advice.
The solution
NOW Digital carried out a combined redesign and platform upgrade: a full refresh of the user experience and visuals, better navigation, an upgrade to Sitecore 10.4, and the introduction of Sitecore Search.
A modern experience for every audience
The new design has taken an approach that matches Baker’s centenary brand. With better navigation and more direct pathways, researchers, students, patients, and donors can find what they need quickly, rather than having to go through a complex content structure. The outcome is a more engaging and impactful image which aids Baker in attracting and keeping the audiences and donors it relies on.
Fast, accurate, and intelligent search
Sitecore Search is a platform designed for the cloud and emphasizes speed when dealing with many research items, fact sheets, news stories, and clinical trial pages, so Baker’s team no longer must set up or adjust the search infrastructure.
It only becomes important to consider speed when the results are accurate; for example, a patient might search for “low blood sugar” even though the item is titled “hypoglycaemia”, or a student might look up “postgrad” in relation to what Baker refers to as “student research”. The indexing method used in field-based indexing gives greater weight to the most important factors, such as the title, the content type, and the topic, while synonym and keyword matching fills the gap between the way people search and the way content is written.
Relevance tuning makes it so that the most authoritative content appears first, while faceted filtering allows users to go from a broad exploration to examining a specific topic in just a few clicks. Since Sitecore Search is based on an API-first architecture, it is also prepared to incorporate more intelligent features such as learning from user behaviour and personalising discovery.
Reduced risk and built to scale
The transition to Sitecore 10.4 provided Baker with a more secure, stable and supportable platform and led to a clear decrease in technical risk. By moving to a current version, the Institute can take advantage of the most recent security updates and performance improvements and at the same time eliminates the exposure that accumulates as a platform grows older and moves further away from vendor support. Just as significant, the upgrade offers Baker a scalable base upon which to build. As the Institute introduces new research programmes, clinical trials, health resources and campaigns, the platform can grow alongside them without the need for a major rebuild or causing a disruption to the user experience. The result is a more maintainable platform that is simpler to develop upon and cheaper to extend. Baker’s team can then focus its efforts on creating new content and new capabilities rather than on managing platform risk.
The conclusion – a platform worthy of the next century of research and discovery
The updated Baker Institute website combines a contemporary and engaging user experience with a secure and scalable base. By using Sitecore 10.4, technical risk is reduced and room is provided for future growth. The new design and navigation give Baker the level of professionalism befitting a top-ranking research institute. Moreover, Sitecore Search enables users to find the Institute’s research, health information and programmes more quickly, to match more accurately with people’s queries, and to be better suited to intelligent discovery.
The fact that the organisation has been keeping hearts beating for 100 years means that its digital presence is designed to support its impact in the next century.