Serco and The Defence Academy

The Defence Academy is part of the Ministry of Defence, whose purpose is to develop the intellectual edge needed for success in operations and leadership in government. They provide a range of both short and long courses ranging from awareness up to expert level, covering five broad themes: leadership, command, technology, business skills, and international engagement.

The Defence Academy needed a website redesign that would better cater to their audience, which ranged from 16-year-old school leavers to middle-aged applicants seeking professional qualifications across the world. Their goals were simple: reorganise site content, improve visibility of their courses, and increase the number of course registrations overall.

A content strategy shapes and defines an organisation’s brand voice. We worked with the Defence Academy to set out a content strategy that would meet their strategic and business goals and serve as a basis for how content would be presented, published, and marketed to its audience.

The existing content wasn’t aligned with the Defence Academy’s business objectives. We resolved this issue by prioritising the promotion of its primary revenue channel, its training courses. We restructured the overall aesthetic of the site to correspond with other UK Government websites. The design was simple, yet functional – we created clear, prominent CTAs and a unified search to reflect the site’s primary purpose of promoting its training courses. All information is now easily available in as few clicks as possible thanks to a more intuitive layout.

While the main objective of the site refresh was to increase course sign-ups, it was also important that the site accommodated other audiences. To provide a more balanced browsing experience, we introduced a Features Navigation bar that highlights key content and allows users to find the information they need quickly. We also created streamlined navigation to provide a richer, more consistent browsing experience regardless of device.