IPEM

A showcase website for a prestigious healthcare membership organisation

The Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) is a professional organisation representing physicists, clinical and biomedical engineers, and technologists working in medicine and biology for the public good. IPEM has over 4,600+ members working across healthcare, academia and industry.

IPEM came to us looking for a modern and fully responsive website to better meet their members’ needs and bring their new brand to life.

To coincide with their new brand launch, IPEM wanted to overhaul their existing website to reflect their core mission: ‘Improving health through physics and engineering in medicine.’

They selected Cantarus as their digital partner that would help them reach their full potential, and we were confident we could deliver a world-class solution for the organisation.

The project goals were simple:

To create a modern, intuitive, inspiring website to elevate IPEM’s brand and values,
To deliver a website that would assist IPEM’s strategy to grow their membership base and professionalism,
To provide a consistent user experience through seamless user journeys and improved navigation,
To reduce manual staff time spent maintaining website content through the use of a highly efficient CMS,
To enable flexibility for IPEM to develop their digital offering into the future.

We were excited to get the ball rolling, so we set up a series of online workshops and independent investigations to determine the main issues and how we would overcome them. Frequent catchups allowed both teams to build a really solid working relationship from the off.

The more we understood about IPEM and their existing website, the more we uncovered a few critical issues holding them back.

The existing website was several years old, and no longer served its purpose. It didn’t reflect who IPEM are and what they strive for, and the lack of user-friendliness made it tricky to convince users to become members. Also, it wasn’t mobile responsive so alienated a significant portion of users.

We redeveloped and redesigned the website to ensure IPEM’s brand values are clearly represented and that the value of membership is demonstrated from the start. The branding, styling and themes were integrated with their ‘living brand’ using their animated logo to really inform the site’s style.

IPEM didn’t have the flexibility they needed with their previous CMS to surface the right content and campaigns across the site. As Gold Partners of Umbraco, we recommended the switch to the Umbraco CMS to ensure their team could add new content efficiently while maintaining quality and consistency.

Previously, navigation was cluttered and limited to only top-level menu items, forcing users to load each page individually to find the content they needed. This, coupled with a confusing informational architecture, meant the user experience was less than optimal. As such, we developed a new menu to include secondary navigation items and structured content so that users can now find relevant, engaging content with ease – something that’s essential when trying to secure new members!

Websites should empower users to search effortlessly from any page, with appropriate filter options to further segment content. The old site was relatively unclear and inconsistent, so, leveraging the in-built Umbraco search engine, we created a site-wide search that is always accessible via the site header. Users can now search by keywords and filter results intuitively to find the things they need.

Other highlights include:

Single Sign-On: We ensured that single sign-on journeys are implemented to optimise user engagement.
Personalisation: The homepage is personalised based on user data to allow users to see the most relevant content.
Events & Training: IPEM hosts numerous events and training courses that needed to be highlighted on the site in an aesthetically pleasing way. They previously had an Events Listing page, but we adapted this to be more intuitive; it is searchable and filterable, including a ‘Book Now’ CTA that takes the user directly to the registration portal. We also created extended event pages to allow larger events to have dedicated areas for additional information.
Journals & eBooks: These publications are now on dedicated listing pages which are more intuitive and consistent and allows users to find them easily.
Resources: Useful resources are simpler to create and maintain, with a Resources Listing page aggregating all resources in one place.
Accessibility: The new website is WCAG AA compliant, so IPEM now has a highly accessible digital presence, vital to reinforce their values of being as inclusive as possible.

The new website, although we’re biased, looks fantastic. The initial project delivery has set the stage for a long-term digital partnership with IPEM. At Cantarus, we don’t just deliver a project and walk away!

Any changes and updates will continue to go through our Client Success Team to ensure continued support in helping IPEM to achieve their goals.

The design and delivery of a new website was of critical strategic importance for IPEM. Our membership is broad and diverse, both in what they do, where they do it and where they are in their careers, so the website needs to be a multifunctional platform meeting a range of needs. It’s relatively early days but the new site does this really well, and continues to evolve. It also showcases our new brand the way it should be, and positions us digitally for the future.

Paul Barrett FCIM Head of Communications

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Our Head of Experience Design, Rob Helsby, would love to chat with you about your design and brand needs.

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