BP’s Energising Futures website is revolutionising how schools access online education resources. With a modern, sleek design, this new website is tailored to the needs of the modern UK school system. It offers an intuitive interface that allows teachers and home-schooling parents to easily find and access the resources they need to educate their students. Built on WordPress, the website has been expertly crafted to provide unprecedented customisation and management to the site’s admin teams. With an integrated API, the website can track almost every interaction, helping to ensure the best possible user experience for schools and their students.
Overview of the old bpES website
The old bpES website was a relic from the past, failing to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of education in the UK. Designed at a time when it could be said that Secondary and Primary Schools were disconnected, the site did not provide a holistic approach to STEM education. The site lacked a coherent structure and failed to give teachers an intuitive way to engage and find the resources needed to educate students in real-world challenges. Overall, the old website was in dire need of an overhaul to help serve the needs of teachers and students better.
Goals for redesigning the bPES website as Energising Futures
The new Energising Futures website needed to become a brilliant new way of teaching science to Secondary and Primary schools to give teachers the freedom to choose the most relevant content. Teachers needed to sign in quickly and easily, share with students a top-notch lineup of ready-to-go resources and get all the support and tools they need to deliver science essentials in lessons aligning with topics, concepts, and key objectives of the UK curricula.
Working with The Association for Science Education (ASE) and partners from academia and industry, the new website’s ultimate goal is to give teachers the high-quality content they need.
The partnership with the ASE and other stakeholders is critical in developing a platform that meets the needs of teachers and students alike. The goal was to provide a comprehensive platform that offers teachers high-quality support, easy access to resources, and flexibility in designing lesson plans that align with the UK curricula. The website features a broad range of STEM education resources, including lesson plans, experiments, and quizzes, all designed to make science more engaging and fun for students.
Redesigning the bpES website as Energising Futures was also crucial to revolutionizing BP’s online presence in the education sector. The brand re-fresh needed a modern website design that would be user-friendly and be built on WordPress, making it easier to manage and update. The rebrand also gave a chance to re-create an impressive lineup of resources covering science and STEM education for primary and secondary schools.
Fhoke also needed to continue its integration with the SPIRIT API so that the BP team could track interactions and downloads of the website’s resources and understand which resources worked best for teachers and pupils.
Careful planning
Careful planning was one of the most crucial aspects of designing BP’s new Energising Futures website. Fhoke worked closely with We Are Futures, a specialist brand and social impact agency that manages the content and relationship with BP. Together, we extensively pre-planned the site structure, user flow, and templates for the website to give a revolutionary new user experience.
Since the Energising Futures website is primarily targeted towards schools and education, it was essential to ensure that the new website design would cater to the needs of this demographic. We carried out tasks such as sitemaps, site flows, wireframes, and user testing to ensure the new website would work seamlessly for its target users and provide an enhanced experience.
Another critical consideration was retaining tens of thousands of users when migrating to a new platform. We wanted to ensure users could effortlessly access the new, revised, and updated resources on Energising Futures. Therefore, we made it a seamless user experience for them when logging back into the new website on a new URL.
By carrying out extensive planning, we developed a website design that catered to the unique needs of educators. Moreover, it enabled We Are Futures to manage the content and flow of the website efficiently. With careful planning, we could provide a user-friendly experience and revolutionize BP’s online presence.
Design process
With a blank canvas to design from and a carefully planned site structure, the design team took the new vibrant brand and let their imaginations run wild across new website pages. Our goal was to create a positive impact at every touchpoint, leaving an unforgettable mark in people’s minds to maximise brand recognition. Bold colours, distinctive icons and illustrations, and warm imagery work harmoniously to tell a story, promote the resources, and reflect the idea of an educational website.
When designing the Energising Futures website, we had to consider our target audience of primary and secondary school teachers and, to a lesser extent, students. We wanted to create an immersive experience for them that would be both educational and enjoyable.
To design the two main primary and secondary educational sections, we used bright colours and simple illustrations that would be easy for teachers to relate to. The language is also playful, creating a friendly and welcoming tone that encourages exploration and curiosity.
We constantly considered the user experience and the site’s functionality throughout the design process. We ensured that the site was intuitive and easy to navigate, making it effortless for users to find what they were looking for. We also ensured the design was responsive, meaning it could be viewed on any device without compromising the user experience.
Overall, the design process was an exciting and rewarding journey that resulted in a beautiful and functional website. We believe the new Energising Futures website will positively impact teachers and their students, encouraging them to learn about science while having fun.
Building the new Energising Futures website on WordPress
To make it easy for We Are Futures and BP teams to manage their extensive resources, Fhoke built the new Energising Futures website on WordPress. As an open-source platform, WordPress allowed Fhoke to create a flexible and cost-effective solution.
Using custom post types, resources can be uploaded and organised individually as posters, PDFs, videos, interactive games, quizzes, and presentations. These resources can then be grouped into collections for a more holistic educational experience for teaching.
On the front end, the website looks engaging and informative, creating a seamless on-site experience that is easy to use.
Overall, using WordPress to build the Energising Futures website proved smart—the CMS platform allowed for effortless management of resources, providing a level of customisation that exceeded expectations.
API integration for tracking interactions
Tracking interactions on a website is a crucial aspect of understanding user behaviour and making informed decisions about content. For BP’s Energising Futures website, tracking user interactions was important. This meant ensuring that all activity on the website was logged and posted to the CRM system, SPIRIT.
Collaborating with the CRM team at EDCO, Fhoke ensured that all data points from the old website were correctly re-integrated into the new site’s functionality. This included user registrations, logins, and interactions with the resources available on the site, such as downloads and views.
Additionally, new data points were added to enhance reporting, allowing BP to understand better the needs and behaviours of primary and secondary school teachers.
By carefully tracking user activity, BP can now make more informed decisions about the types of resources and content to offer on the Energising Futures website. This data will help them better understand what resonates with users and where improvements can be made to enhance the user experience. The result is a website that is more tailored to the needs of both primary and secondary school users and a more effective educational resource for teachers and schools.
Launching the website
The new Energising Futures website represents BP’s commitment to science education and promoting STEM learning in schools. It is an invaluable resource for teachers, providing everything they need to engage students and enhance their understanding of science. Fhoke has played a critical role in developing a website that is functional, visually appealing, and easy to use. By using WordPress, BP now has a content management system that is scalable and easy to maintain. The API integration has made it possible to track every interaction and ensure that the website meets the evolving needs of schools, teachers, and students.
