Helping people find a club near them: a usability review for the Royal Yachting Association
The RYA’s ‘Where’s My Nearest’ tool is one of its most-used features, but it was built around the organisation’s needs rather than its users’. Box UK reviewed it and set out what to fix first.
In short
The Royal Yachting Association is the national governing body for all forms of boating, with more than 110,000 members. It wanted to improve its website, starting where changes would matter most to members and to the people it hopes will join.
- A joint session with the RYA identified ‘Where’s My Nearest’, its club and test centre finder, as the priority.
- Box UK walked through the tool as a user would, assessing it against usability principles.
- A peers, innovators and competitors analysis compared it with other locator services.
- The RYA received a prioritised report with best practice examples and wireframes.
Customer Background
The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) is the national governing body for all forms of boating, with more than 110,000 members. It works to grow support for and participation in boating, among its members and beyond. Its website is one of the main ways both members and non-members deal with it.
The Challenge
The RYA wanted to improve key areas of its website to help grow its membership and get more people involved in boating. But it needed to know where to start, and which changes would matter most to the organisation and to the people using the site.
Our Approach
The review began with a joint session with the RYA to agree its goals. That pointed to one area above the rest: ‘Where’s My Nearest’, which helps people find local clubs, test centres and other services. It was already well used by current and prospective members, but it had been built around the organisation’s needs rather than its users’.
Our consultants walked through the tool and related journeys as a user would, from finding the tool and running a search to reviewing results and viewing club pages. They assessed its information architecture, navigation, content and interface design against three usability principles:
- Efficiency: can people get to the tool quickly, without being overwhelmed or distracted?
- Effectiveness: can they do what they came to do?
- Satisfaction: is it rewarding to use, and is there a reason to come back?
We also ran a peers, innovators and competitors analysis, comparing the tool with similar services from other membership organisations and with locator services from other sectors.
Before writing the report, we played back early findings to the RYA and agreed with them what the final report should cover and how it should be set out.
What we recommended
- A prioritised list of changes, ranked by their value to the RYA and its users.
- Best practice examples from the peers, innovators and competitors analysis.
- Wireframes showing how the pages could look once the changes were made.
- Longer-term ideas, such as bringing clubs’ social media feeds into their profile pages, which would keep them fresh without extra work for the RYA.
The Outcome
The RYA came away with an independent view of where its most-used tool was falling short, and a plan for improving it, starting with the changes that would deliver most value. Feedback on the final playback was very positive.
FAQs
A structured assessment of a website or tool by UX consultants, who work through it as a user would and test it against usability principles. For the RYA, that meant assessing its ‘Where’s My Nearest’ tool for efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction.
Start with what’s most used and most important to your goals. The RYA’s review began with a joint session that identified its club finder as the priority, because it was heavily used by both members and prospective members.
A comparison of your service with similar organisations, the best examples from any sector, and direct competitors. For the RYA, it showed how its locator compared with other membership bodies and locator services elsewhere.
A prioritised list of changes, with enough detail to act on. The RYA’s report included best practice examples and wireframes showing how pages could look after the changes.
What this means
for your organisation
If you’re a membership organisation, the tools people use most can grow up around your internal needs rather than theirs. A focused review of one heavily used feature can show you where to start.
If there’s a part of your site you suspect isn’t working for members, send us a few lines about it. We’ll tell you how we’d review it.
Talk to one of our digital experts
Sophie Collins
UX Designer
Do you need help maintaining product quality and business alignment?
Passionate about all things User Experience and Agile, Sophie has worked across the entire software delivery lifecycle.
With a background in Product Ownership and Software Testing, Sophie approaches UX with both pragmatism and quality, focusing on producing results which have value for both businesses and users.
Or call us on 020 7439 1900
Related case studies
-
-
-
Royal Photographic Society
Read more: Royal Photographic SocietyUser research that shaped the brief for RPS’s new website
Have a project you’d like to discuss?
Give us a call on 020 7439 1900 or fill in the form and we will get back to you.