Digital transformation for one of the world’s leading weather institutions.
The Royal Meteorological Society is an iconic British institution with a long and established history as the nation’s authoritative weather resource. The society’s reach goes way beyond the UK, with thousands of visits every month from every part of the world and their content.
Like many established online properties, the existing RMetS web had simply outgrown capacity and was unable to deliver the kind of experience or functionality users expected.
The organisation wanted a new digital hub to better promote the diverse range of services their existing website provided. This included an expansive news archive, academic resources, a very active events calendar, shop, weather information and large private members area.
Two issues RMetS requested we pay special attention to were addressing a high drop off (or bounce) rate and the difficulty editors had publishing new content.
The Secret Source team built a custom Drupal theme in Drupal 8 and migrated the data from their existing older Drupal 6 system. We integrated custom event and membership modules tightly coupled to their existing CRM.
The result is a modern magazine style layout which echoes earlier designs and maintains a strong connection to existing membership, while offering new audiences a contemporary and engaging experience, through simplified and intuitive navigation.
With the new RMetS website going live in early 2018 bounce rates immediately dropped, from almost 60% in April to under 10% two months later. Page views, average session durations and new users reflected similar improvements.
As the chosen web partner of RMetS we continue to add new features and updates, assist the editorial team with presentation and advise on new digital projects.