People wearing eye patches

The Fred Hollows Foundation

The Fred Hollows Foundation sought to revamp its website to better allow the site to deliver on its mission of eliminating avoidable blindness worldwide. Among the key objectives of the new site were greater flexibility to accommodate global audiences, stronger donation workflows, and enhanced accessibility.

The challenge

The Fred Hollows Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation working towards eliminating avoidable blindness globally and improving the health of Indigenous Australians. 

The Foundation’s existing site had been built on a CMS version that was nearing end-of-life, which made it difficult for content authors to adapt or implement new features, while design inconsistencies and accessibility challenges undermined the user experience. 

The Foundation also needed to unify its global operations under a single website while accommodating the diverse priorities of regional offices. Content and messaging for audiences around the world had to be tailored while maintaining a cohesive global identity.

In addition, the legacy CMS was hindering flexibility and failing to facilitate best practices for optimising the donation experience.

Against the backdrop of these challenges, Fred Hollows engaged Luminary for the implementation of a new CMS, a redesign of the site’s look and feel, a revised information architecture, and the development of a new donation flow. 

Screenshot of Hollows website showing curved edge images

What we did

Replatforming to Optimizely

With its existing CMS platform coming to the end of technical support, the Foundation decided to replatform. Optimizely was chosen as the new CMS for its ability to meet several business goals:

  • Improving the experience for content editors, particularly in terms of multi-lingual capabilities
  • Streamlining and improving the digital asset management experience 
  • Improving integrations with existing CRM and CDP platforms
  • Improving flexibility with page design and donation form templates, and 
  • Improving the security of donor data management. 

Conducting a content review

The project kicked off with a comprehensive content review, utilising keyword research and analytics data to identify new content opportunities that aligned with user search patterns. This involved a high-level content audit to evaluate existing content and identify areas for improvement. The Luminary team held workshops to establish content goals and themes, which led to the development of localised content ideas.

Fred's vision

Revising the Information Architecture

The information architecture (IA) was a crucial aspect of the project. Card sorting activities were conducted with audiences in Australia, Hong Kong, USA, UK, UAE, and program offices in East Africa, South Asia and South East Asia to understand user navigation preferences. The results were merged to create a new IA, which was refined through feedback rounds with stakeholders. The final IA aimed to create a streamlined and user-centric structure, accommodating regional variations while maintaining global consistency.

Accessibility-first design

As an organisation supporting people with vision impairments, the website needed to set a benchmark for accessibility. Luminary refined the Foundation’s brand palette for digital use. The introduction of a new highlight colour, (a blue-purple blend affectionately coined ‘blurple’), complemented the Foundation’s primary orange without compromising accessibility. The resulting design balanced compliance with WCAG standards and visual appeal, ensuring inclusivity for all users.

Region maps

Global localisation

The Foundation faced the challenge of creating a single, unified website that catered to the diverse needs and priorities of its global offices. Each region, including the Middle East, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and East Africa, required localised content and messaging while maintaining a consistent global brand identity. To address this, Luminary conducted multiple rounds of feedback with stakeholders to finalise the IA structure and determine which content would be shown in different regions.

Donation workflow optimisation

Luminary redesigned the donation process to improve user experience and flexibility. The team conducted workshops, competitor reviews, and risk assessments, ultimately implementing a phased approach, starting with some baseline UI improvements to simplify data collection, and moving towards an ongoing rollout of strategies for iterative improvements, supported by A/B testing with Optimizely’s Web Experimentation functionality.

Fred Hollows website on mobile phones

The result

The new site provides content authors with a far more flexible platform and lays a solid foundation for future scalability and enhancements. Key outcomes include:

  • Stronger global identity: A unified platform capable of localised content delivery while maintaining a cohesive look and feel.
  • Accessibility improvements: Vibrant, WCAG compliant colour schemes and design enhancements.
  • Donation optimisation: A simplified, flexible donation flow poised for better conversion rates.
  • Future-ready foundation: A scalable, testable platform that integrates with tools like Optimizely Experimentation for continuous improvement.

While post-launch traffic trends are still stabilising, client feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Granting the Fred Hollows Foundation the flexibility it needed, the website is now better equipped to grow the Foundation’s global impact.


Fred Hollows Donation CTA

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