Case study
A lesson in seamless design
A cohesive, user-centric redesign to drive growth and engagement across the retail community.
The British Retail Consortium is the trade association for giant retail conglomerates as well as small, independent stores. Responsible for providing industry guidance, their outdated Umbraco website, fragmented front-end domains and inefficient CMS was failing to engage users as needed.
The Challenge
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is a giant in the British retail sector, representing conglomerates such as IKEA, ASOS and Apple while serving thousands of independent retailers of all sizes. Acting as a single source of truth for legislative changes and industry guidance, BRC’s digital presence needed to match its authority, but the inefficiencies of their online platform worked against them.
The outdated Umbraco website and fragmented front-end domains created an unsatisfactory user experience that failed to engage members and was inefficient from a CMS perspective. Navigation was clunky, content management was awkward and accessibility standards unmet. This compromised BRC’s ability to showcase the full scope of their services.
After a consultation, a complete overhaul was necessary to futureproof content delivery, unify platforms and streamline the user journey.
The Approach
We had a dual focus: cutting-edge web design and data-driven UX strategy to improve the BRC portaland navigation. This was to achieve BRC’s primary goals of boosting memberships, simplifying content entry for internal teams and establishing a robust CMS across all channels.
UX focused strategy and user-centric testing
At every stage, our strategy was validated through extensive testing and auditing. We began with an in-depth discovery phase that included stakeholder interviews and UX workshops. This was followed by persona validation, tree and first-click testing and heatmapping. The research ensured our approach was grounded in real user and business needs.
End-to-end platform rebuild and integration
A full site audit revealed the urgent requirement for an Umbraco site upgrade, from version 8 to version 13. This was alongside a complete revamp across the backend, frontend, CMS and CRM to bring software in line with our best practices and streamline future maintenance. The previously separate BRC and BRC Learning platforms were merged to improve user experience navigation. Both users and businesses are now able to access relevant information when needed.
Meeting accessibility standards
As a global authority, site accessibility is a must. Our accessibility testing ensured all the different front-end components are navigable. We included robust keyboard navigation controls and adjusted the brand colours on BRC’s website to meet contrast standards for text and enhance readability.
I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone at [IDHL] for delivering such a brilliant new website for us. We’ve had some great feedback from both members and colleagues, and we’re really pleased with how smoothly it all went.
[...] I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your hard work: in the words of one of our colleagues “We knew it was going to be good, but it's exceeded our expectations! This is just the beginning...
— Anna Marshall. Digital Products Owner, Royal College of Radiologists
The Results
This project went far beyond aesthetics – it was a full digital transformation. We gave BRC a sleeker, more coordinated site built on real user feedback, dramatically improving functionality and user experience.
By grounding every decision in data, we tackled each pain point identified by BRC. The final result is a highly intuitive, future-proofed platform that drives greater member engagement and simplifies content management.
This project proved that thoughtful, data-driven design and technical expertise can transform a critical organisation’s digital presence and impact the retail sector at large.
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