Fred Hutch – Mobile-First design strategy
Building a data-informed case for a mobile-first site redesign.
Challenge
Fred Hutch needed to build a business case to gain board approval for a mobile-first website redesign.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is one of the world’s preeminent biomedical research institutes, translating discoveries into cures in the fight against cancer and other diseases. Their efforts to push health science forward are made possible through the generosity of donors. Fred Hutch’s web analytics implementation lacked the fidelity required to make a case for an investment in mobile-first redesign. The Fred Hutch team also needed help crafting a vision for a new mobile-first website.
Fred Hutch called on Wheelhouse to reinvent its digital experience and build an analytics program that could demonstrate digital performance gains. In Wheelhouse, Fred Hutch saw a partner that would thoughtfully advance their digital infrastructure, grow their culture of continuous performance improvement and help the marketing and philanthropy teams better use the site to accelerate the center’s scientific priorities.
163%
YoY increase in donations
167%
Increase in mobile users
57%
Increase in total site users
Approach
Work closely with cross-functional stakeholders to set benchmarks for performance post-site redesign.
Wheelhouse listened to a diverse range of stakeholders across programs at Fred Hutch to understand the site’s audiences, traffic and engagement. Wheelhouse implemented analytics tracking on the site to tell a data driven story about the value of a site redesign focused on improve mobile users experience.
Wheelhouse implemented Ecommerce tracking to achieve better fidelity between Google Analytics and Fred Hutch’s donor management system and improve conversion attribution. Wheelhouse also developed several experiments to optimize the donation UX for the new site.
With a more robust data collection process implemented, Fred Hutch and Wheelhouse’s Digital Strategy team were able to quickly identify friction in the UX and develop clear requirements and recommendations for measuring the performance of the new site.
Outcomes
Fred Hutch’s redesign and analytics program not only drove outstanding performance but also gave them a newfound ability to gather, trust and interpret user data.
With better reporting capabilities in place, Fred Hutch is able to share insights across teams and leverage trustworthy data to shape design and UX priorities. Wheelhouse continues to support Fred Hutch on a variety of digital strategy and analytics initiatives, and are proud to have the opportunity to help them fund their incredible research work.
“Within 3 months we had clear signal that their strategies were delivering results: Year-over-year donations increased 163%, users increased 111%, sessions increased 88%, pageviews increased 53%, time on page increased 29%, and organic bounce rate decreased 37%.”
– Celeste Bernard, Sr Director UX Design
