Helping save lives

Supporting blood donation across Scotland

Informing and attracting blood donors

24/7

Showing blood stock levels

60%

Using mobile devices

Eligibility quiz

The Challenge

NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) as part of its Digital Engagement Strategy wanted to build a refreshed Scotblood branded website.

This campaign website informs current blood donors and attracts new donors. The new site would act as the primary online destination for Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) for all donor activity.

With a large and engaging social media presence, Scotblood needed a new site that was responsive on mobile devices as well as desktop.

The site needed to educate users on blood types, current stocks and eligibility criteria. With donation sessions taking place across Scotland, including the 6 static donor centres, the functionality to search for session times was also important to include.

The Objectives

Improve User Experience

Provide an accessible and informative website that is responsive by default, provides rich content and is integrated with social media
Support users

Help potential donors throughout their user journey from donation eligibility to locating nearest donation centre
Increase access and engagement with target audience

Educate potential donors on eligibility and blood groups to increase the registration and timely attendance of donors
Technical reuse and value

Help NSS reuse existing in-house technologies and only introduce additional technologies when required

Visit website

The Insight

We undertook a technical workstream to integrate with the core NSS Elasticsearch instance - implemented by Storm as part of another project – and it involved integrating a localised index for the Scotblood site to power both the donation session search and main site search.

Sites across the NSS digital estate will be able to aggregate search results from both their own content as well as relevant content from other associated sources within the same search results. Simultaneously, they will maintain the power to filter results and discover new content through the power of multi-organisational faceted view.

The Result

Providing an enhanced experience for the end user and a unique opportunity for NSS to lead the way in opening its many data sources to the public.

We also worked with SNBTS and held interviews with donors and potential donors to ensure relevant and evidence based information was used to develop the user journey. This helped SNBTS present engaging and relevant information and features and it is hoped this approach will deliver long-term benefits.