The British Association of Urological Surgeons
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The British Association of Urological Surgeons is a membership-based organisation and exists to promote the highest standards of practice in urology.
The Brief
LightMedia was invited to tender for the job of redesigning and developing the new British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) members/patients’ website.
“Our primary concern was to have a new website that functioned more speedily than the old one,” explains Patricia Hagan, Deputy Chief Executive of BAUS, “We wanted to maintain the volume of content (which was considerable), refresh the site and have a better performance to give an enhanced experience to our users.”
How We Helped
The project was delivered in two phases. Phase 1 involved both organisations working closely to develop a specification including wireframes, site map and design concepts. Phase 2 involved developing the actual site including populating it, testing and deployment.
Site features include a members’ area which has; news, events, a discussion forum and integration with the BAUS membership system. An extensive patients’ area provides online help with identifying symptoms, information on procedures and it even contains a virtual museum.
LightMedia had already worked on BAUS’ surgical outcomes data so the Association were aware of their work. “We liked their collaborative approach. Yes, they had their own ideas but they ran some very helpful workshops with us, looking at navigation and improving the user’s journey through the website.”
“The working partnership was even better than anticipated. As members of our project team were working surgeons, it wasn’t uncommon to have meetings outside of normal working hours. LightMedia were very flexible, proactive and kept to our tight timescale, even presenting the detailed specification to our trustees on a weekend so we could get sign-off and move quickly into the implementation phase.”
“As a membership organisation, there is a wide body of views and opinions that we have to take into account. If you don’t nail the project down at the beginning, you’ll get ‘project creep’ with everybody wanting to add their own bit of functionality. We found the two phase project approach (specification then implementation) helped us to contain costs and deliver the project on time and in budget.”
“From an IT point of view, we’re a small team at BAUS so we have to integrate with other systems. LightMedia’s willingness to meet with these suppliers, their pragmatism and unfailingly helpful tone has been wonderful. I feel they take a pride in the website in the same way that we do so it feels like a real working partnership.”
The Outcome
The website went live on schedule ready for the BAUS Annual Meeting in Manchester. It was on budget and received great feedback from both association members and the public.
“It’s been such a great project to work on and they are a wonderful company to deal with” explains Patricia Hagan, “We felt they knew about our project intimately and the promptness with which they dealt with everything – and continue to deal with – is enormously impressive.”
“We’ve recommended them to several other organisations as a result. My Chief Executive said of LightMedia, ‘If you could bottle it and more people could have it, it would be marvellous.’”
Our build of BAUS' website won ‘Best in Class’ with The Interactive Media Awards (IMA) in the Medical category and also won Bronze with Horizon Interactive Awards in the Healthcare category.
Link
Take a look at the website www.baus.org.uk.