The Piscatorial Society
Making a complex organisation easier to understand
Different people, different questions
Prospective members needed a clear sense of the fishing available to them, the benefits of membership and the wider life of the Society. For prospective fishery owners, the priorities were different: the Society’s credentials, its approach to fisheries management and conservation, and the reassurance that their water would be in responsible hands.
The website also needed to work for people encountering the Society for the first time through search, without assuming any prior knowledge of the organisation.
Building the website around its audience
The same thinking runs through the whole website. Content, design, imagery, colour, typography, functionality and search aren’t treated as separate exercises; each decision has to make sense for the audience and for what the website is there to achieve.
With the Piscatorial Society, that meant taking a large and sometimes complex organisation and making it clear, engaging and easy to use, without losing its character.
Seeing what happens after launch
The same thinking runs through the whole website. Content, design, imagery, colour, typography, functionality and search aren’t treated as separate exercises; each decision has to make sense for the audience and for what the website is there to achieve.
With the Piscatorial Society, that meant taking a large and sometimes complex organisation and making it clear, engaging and easy to use, without losing its character.
Did it work?
The clearest measure was membership enquiries. In August, the first full month after launch, the Society received 10 enquiries — compared with an average of 4 in August over the previous five years.
Enquiries continued into September, with the Society itself keeping track of the new website’s contribution.