ANDYSMANCLUB and The Bigger Boat - Building hope

• Headquarters: Halifax, UK
• Technology Stack: Gatsby.js, Storyblok, Netlify, Algolia

Welcome to the transformative journey of ANDYSMANCLUB, a men’s suicide prevention charity, set up to combat the growing issue of men taking their own lives and male mental health issues. Explore the dynamic digital space The Bigger Boat meticulously crafted with Storyblok, offering seamless navigation for those seeking support. The successful migration took 3 months and has instantly seen an increase of 30% of overall traffic, and a 75% reduction of editing processes.

Challenges in enabling sustainable growth

The challenges addressed during the ANDYSMANCLUB project were multifaceted, involving technical, usability, and strategic considerations, all geared towards enhancing the support and accessibility provided by the organization.

• Scaling for Growth: The organization faced difficulties accommodating their rapid growth, particularly with the addition of more than 70 support groups.
• Performance Bottlenecks: Increased demand exposed the limitations, causing sluggish load times and reduced availability.
• Pandemic Impact: The shift to online interactions during lockdowns exacerbated the platform's challenges, leading to further accessibility issues.
• Speed and Reliability: Peak usage times required the website to be fast and reliable, ensuring seamless access for users seeking help.
• Content Accessibility: The platform needed to more efficiently convey vital information to users, catering to their needs in an efficient manner.
• Usability and UI: Given the sensitive nature of the content, the user experience had to be carefully designed, clear, and intuitive.
• Mobile Experience: Ensuring usability and efficient access for mobile users was crucial for a diverse audience.

Solutions for growth, scalability, and reliability

The implementation of Storyblok's capabilities within the ANDYSMANCLUB project resulted in a transformed digital presence that effectively supports and empowers users seeking mental health assistance and community engagement.

• Modern Tech Stack: Utilized Storyblok along with Gatsby JS, Netlify, and Algolia to create an advanced technical infrastructure.
• Enhanced Navigation: Streamlined website navigation with a clear focus on the primary CTA, "Find your nearest group."
• Mobile User Improvements: Revamped the user interface for mobile users, ensuring seamless access to vital information.
• Subtle Scroll Enhancements: Incorporated subtle scroll transitions to deliver a pleasing and smooth user experience.
• Community-Centric Content: Featured testimonials and videos to foster a stronger sense of community and showcase facilitators..
• Enhanced User Experience: Analytics revealed increased engagement, with the "group finder" page becoming the most-visited on the website.
• Simplified Content Editing: Content creators at ANDYSMANCLUB benefited from Storyblok's user-friendly interface, reducing editing effort by 75%.

Who are The Bigger Boat?

The Bigger Boat started their “maiden voyage” in 2010 with a crew of three people. Since then they have grown into an award-winning crew of strategists, storytellers, brand gurus and digital thought leaders with a focus akin to captain Ahab: to make their clients successful.

On their journey, as their team grew and their cumulative skill set expanded, their values remained the same. As an integrated marketing agency they are focused on continual improvement, being respectful to each other and enjoying what they do. They approach client relationships with full trust and immerse themselves in the projects, essentially becoming an extension of the client’s team.

The Bigger Boat crew also likes to give back to the community. This is why they chose to support ANDYSMANCLUB, a men’s suicide prevention charity, by rebuilding their website and making it more accessible to users in need of support.

ANDYSMANCLUB, it’s okay to talk

ANDYSMANCLUB was founded following the unexpected death of a young man named Andrew Roberts who took his own life at the age of 23. The charity was set up to prevent other families going through what the Roberts family went through in the aftermath of his death. What started off as nine men meeting up over a coffee in Halifax back in 2016, has now grown into a movement of more than 2,000 men, in over 100 locations, meeting every Monday at 7pm (excluding bank holidays) to speak openly about their troubles or simply sit and be a listening ear to others. All ANDYSMANCLUB meetings are free to attend to any man over the age of 18 with no registration or referral needed.

Men in need of support looking to join one of the groups would use ANDYSMANCLUB’s website to identify the support group closest to them. In fact, this is the main goal of the website: to provide useful information to users in a swift and efficient manner.

Charting the course to a seamless experience

As mentioned, the main goal of the ANDYSMANCLUB website was to enable users to identify their nearest support group. Consequently, the brief The Bigger Boat received was very straightforward: ensure the website was easy to use and, critically, that people who need help, can very easily and quickly find their nearest support group. This, of course, meant that both speed and reliability were key, especially during periods of peak usage. Secondly, the website was also designated to help raise the charity’s profile with their corporate partners.

A tale of transformation

From a development point of view, built with Storyblok, Gatsby JS, Netlify, and Algolia, this was a simple project. However, due to its sensitive nature, special care was required to deliver on the clear objective of the website in terms of user experience.

For this reason, the navigation was made much clearer and the main CTA ‘Find your nearest group’ was brought into focus. Times and dates for meet-ups, and the fact they’re free to attend, are repeated and widely noticeable across the site, ensuring the message of continuous support was as visible as possible.

The color palette was stripped back to black and white with a bold CTA color of yellow. Paired with a strong, heavy typeface, the site now has a masculine feel to appeal to its predominantly male audience.

Several visual and technical enhancements and usability improvements have been made for mobile users, while the UI is now more streamlined for ease of access to vital information. Subtle transitions on scroll make it a pleasant UX.

Finally, the agency featured testimonials and videos around the site so those struggling can learn about others’ positive experiences with ANDYSMANCLUB. Now, there’s a greater sense of community and users can see the team, trustees and army of facilitators on hand to provide men with a safe space to talk. 

Overall, the project followed a clear process of discovery and strategy, design, development, content and testing, sign off, and was live within three months.

Why Storyblok: Unveiling the reasons

For The Bigger Boat, Storyblok was an obvious choice, since it has been their preferred headless CMS partner for the last 18 months. But beyond that, Storyblok was the best choice to fulfill the main goal of the website: speed and reliability. Already in Google Analytics, it is visible that the group finder is the most-visited page on the website, twice as popular as even the homepage. At launch, there was a huge uplift in traffic as users reacted to social and PR content announcing the new website. There has been no downtime since launch and overall traffic has increased by 30%.

There was also a positive reaction from an editing perspective. ANDYSMANCLUB’s content creators, even those who aren’t tech inclined, are able to easily make changes and create content. Their regular editing processes have been reduced by 75%!

Additionally, in terms of feedback, there was an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from people wishing to attend support groups and existing attendees, as well as companies and organizations wishing to work with ANDYSMANCLUB. Being able to send a slick, clean-looking and fast website to companies has no doubt helped them open up doors to new partners.

Building hope for the future

More than a website, The Bigger Boat, has built for ANDYSMANCLUB a way for men to find hope. They gave the charity a stronger voice to shout out their poignant message: It’s okay to talk.