The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign’s plan
Built in Drupal with a fun, wonky design, cute imagery and animated cupcakes. Nice use of a hand-drawn typeface and unmissable donation buttons. This is a mini-website devoted to a single initiative and dedicated to getting people to sign up or donate. Check out the rest of the site for more cute animations and simple sign-up forms.
Mencap
They call themselves “the voice of learning disability” and their website makes good use of quotes, portraits and videos of their members. The language used on the website is deliberately kept simple and the navigation is minimal compared to many websites.
Action for Blind People
Proof that an accessible website can be visually interesting. Look at the way the page scrolls but the icons for changing the viewing preferences always remain visible. Good use of minimal colour as a navigational aid. Again, a very prominent donation button.
Shelter
The fifth most visited charity website of 2006 according to Hitwise. Hover over the items in the navigational menu and see how each one expands and contracts to display further links: that’s a great way to pack a lot of information into a small space. They’re very keen to sign you up for their newsletter, find out more about their work and to join them on social networking websites, and the language used on the home page is very much a call to action.
Red Nose Day
International development, domestic violence, poverty … and comedy. I can just image the meetings they had trying to get the tone of this website right. But it very successfully balances the serious with the funny in another website with a hand-drawn look to it. The colour scheme, a mix of reds, greys and black, is instantly recognisable.
Action for Children
Hand-drawn websites seem to be very in fashion lately and here’s another one. It’s perhaps an obvious choice for a children’s charity and it’s carried off here with some humour and playfulness. I particularly like the way their tagline is scrawled along the top and merges with the search form.
The Nominet Trust
Simple but effective. Cute and appropriate use of cartoonish icons and clever use of hover effects on the navigation menu to turn what could have been a dull website into an enjoyable experience. It helps that the content is short, to the point and well-written.
And the rest…
Which UK charity websites have I overlooked? Please leave a comment with your personal favourite.
No related posts.
In terms of pure usability, I think the WWF UK site is brilliant – http://www.wwf.org.uk/
Mat
on August 31st, 2009