Lithys 2017: The Consortium- Digital Design Excellence

Lithys 2017: The Consortium- Digital Design Excellence

We all have a big idea to make education accessible, enjoyable and achievable for every child.  We plan to do this through a combination of our community objectives, member’s needs and commercial aims.

 

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consortiumteaser.pngCompany:  The Consortium                                                                

Entry submitted by: Ceri Heathcote (Content Strategy Manager)

Community: Collaboroo

Lithy category:  Digital Design Excellence

 

 

The Consortium is a market leading supplier of products and services to schools, colleges, academies, early years establishments, care homes and public sector organisations in the UK. It is a one-stop shop with a focus on buying made easy. It has a market leading website and extensive range of over 40,000 products. Collaboroo was launched by The Consortium as a new brand to engage teachers and early years practitioners.

 

Our digital goals with the Lithium-powered community platform 

Collaboroo was created with a shared mission between The Consortium and its members, primary teachers and early years practitioners.  We all have a big idea to make education accessible, enjoyable and achievable for every child.  We plan to do this through a combination of our community objectives, member’s needs and commercial aims.

                             

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The design elements make our community unique  

Following extensive competitor and market research, we identified four key areas that would make our community really unique and useful for teacher and early years practitioners. These areas are shown below.

             

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Our Brand Blueprint

For our community, we decided to create a new brand, which is supported and facilitated by The Consortium. We believe that this will allow the community to be owned by its members but with some additional help from The Consortium to get it going and keep it on track. Our branding is reflected in our visual identity, community design and communications and was created by an in house team, which comprised of content and social specialists, designer, web designer, classroom team specialist, copywriter and photographer.  The brand workshops were complemented by feedback from a panel of teachers and early years practitioners at each step of the way.

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Our community consists of a clean fresh look and visual and modern looking feed on the homepage and category pages that allow the content of our members to take centre stage.  

 

 

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How we executed our design

Collaboroo was customised with a visual feed on the home and category pages to show different types of content marked with branded icons to give users a variety of ways to contribute and interact.

 

 

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Q&A - Lithium’s forums module

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Competitions - Lithium’s contests module

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Expert blog posts – Lithium’s Blog Module

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Topic Talk Groups - Lithium’s groups module.

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Ideas -  Lithium’s TKB module.

 

TKB Templates

We implemented 3 different templates to select from when contributing an idea:tkb.png

Pre-populated headings on ‘how to’ forms also helped to keep the contributions focused. encouraging.png

 

Encouraging Interaction

We wanted a clear call to action for our visitors on every page so included 3 buttons in the site header.cta.png

 

We streamlined the process for contributions with a custom built drop down which guided the contributor through the necessary choices and took then to the correct form.

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It goes without saying that our busy audience needed to access Collaboroo on the move so our designs are fully responsive.

 

Content Filters

On each of the home and category pages a custom filter controlled by predefined labels (added to the content by members) allows visitors to quickly discover what they need.

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We adapted the Lithium community function of ‘kudos’ to become ‘smiles’ with our own smiley icon.

 

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We carefully designed a custom page to tell the story of Collaboroo using branded icons.

 

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Metrics showcasing our design excellence 

Collaboroo launched in mid January 2017 and since launch has seen the following:

  • Over 5000 new members/ sign  ups
  • Over 30,000 visits and 100, 000 page views
  • 53% mobile usage, 18% tablet, 30% desktop
  • Over 250 member posts
  • Over 350 smiles (Kudos)
  • 1299 active users (logging in twice or more)

 

Comments

Best Luck !!