The Filter team provided expert guidance and support to build an engaging, user-friendly website on WordPress, whilst equipping the client with the tools and knowledge required for their future.
Empower Up is a not-for-profit initiative which aims to equip organisations in the UK games industry with the appropriate resources and knowledge to establish, improve and grow their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policies.
Supported by the games trade body UKIE‘s #RaiseTheGame initiative, and devised by specialist games recruitment agency Amiqus Limited in collaboration with Mimram Media, Empower Up creates a central hub for EDI resources for games studios and associated companies to help them focus on positives behaviours and outcomes.
Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are important for businesses across all sectors, with particular significance in the games industry.
EDI initiatives contribute to improved decision-making, innovation and an overall better reputation for businesses. They ensure legal compliance and reduce the risk of discrimination, which is essential for maintaining a positive work culture.
Within the games industry, EDI plays a unique role. This industry caters to a diverse global audience and embracing EDI principles is essential for connecting with players from different backgrounds.
Inclusive game development and representation allows companies to adapt to changing market dynamics, stay relevant and encourage strong player engagement. A commitment to EDI helps attract diverse talent, creating a workforce that reflects the broad range of gamers and, in turn, results in more innovative, engaging and successful gaming experiences.
Collaboratively, we embarked on an in-depth journey with their team, utilising our planning and discovery sessions to understand the key audiences.
The organisation lacked established brand guidelines and needed a comprehensive update to refresh the branding, look and feel of the website.
Further, the website itself needed to strike a balance between being fun and engaging, while also being straightforward to manage and maintain.
This understanding formed the basis for putting together a comprehensive plan for delivery of a website that would not only be easy to manage but also engaging and fully accessible.
Our in-house UX and UI design teams brought a wealth of experience to the project. Recognising the importance of a unified brand identity, we embarked on the task of crafting new brand guidelines that would accompany and compliment the newly developed website.
These guidelines serve as a foundational document, providing Empower Up with a blueprint for maintaining a consistent look and feel across all aspects of their digital presence.
Our expertise in branding not only ensured that the website aligned perfectly with Empower Up’s mission and values but also guaranteed that their message was delivered cohesively and effectively to their audience.
Following the discovery phase, our team formulated a proposal that presented a platform that would feature a wide range of resources, an interactive health check for members, and provide the team with the skills needed to optimise their content for their audience.
As the project required an easy-to-use back-end system, we opted to use WordPress as the core technology, with a key focus on performance, as we know this would resonate with the target audience. Our team intentionally minimised the use of plugins to take a streamlined and efficient approach.
Our choice to employ WordPress for this project was informed by our extensive experience working with the platform, assuring us that it was the right choice both now and for the future.
As part of our commitment to making sure the website is easy to maintain, we chose to include automation to simplify content management.
By using taxonomies like tags and categories, content will automatically be sorted and organised into distinct blocks when creating a new page.
Using automation not only simplifies tasks for the website admin team but also ensures a seamless and cohesive user experience. Each page will contain relevant content blocks, reinforcing Empower Up’s unique identity across the entire website.
We created a membership area that strikes the right balance between simplicity and efficiency. This feature empowers the admin team with the ability to generate members-only content.
In addition to the exclusive members content, our team introduced an engaging and interactive health check component.
The purpose of the health check is to help companies evaluate where they are currently on their EDI journey. It simply asks the user a range of questions and once completed, offers helpful guidance and resources.
On the back-end of the website, the health check’s questions can be added to or changed very easily, ensuring the maintenance process is quick and painless for the Empower Up team.
Through our collaborative efforts, we created a high performing website with a great purpose.
Data gathered from Google Page Speed Insights shows that the new website has secured an impressive performance score of 97. The site garnered top marks for accessibility, best practices and SEO when assessed on mobile devices, while desktop users enjoyed a flawless experience with scores of 100 across all categories.
The website also attained a grade A rating via GTmetrix, where it excelled with a perfect 100% score in both performance and structure. These scores are a testament to our collaborative approach and an unwavering commitment to delivering an exceptionally fast and accessible website.
These factors will undoubtedly help the Empower Up team to make a real difference within the video games industry, strengthen their brand and have maximum impact within the community.
If you want to read more about website performance, make sure to check out our guide to website performance. We have produced this FREE eBook in collaboration with WP Engine, exploring the vast topic of website performance.
Our team are immensely proud to have partnered with Amiqus Limited, UKIE and Mimram Media to create a user-friendly hub of information which significantly contributes to Empower Up‘s overarching mission of promoting equality, diversity and inclusion within the UK video games industry.
All stakeholders were delighted with the outcome and Filter look forward to supporting them in the future. The newly launched website not only excels in providing an exceptional user experience but also achieves outstanding web performance and complete accessibility.
Make sure to take a look at the finished website for yourself and get in touch if you have a digital project in mind.
