Hc-One | PKD

Hc-One are a nationwide care provider with 230 homes around the UK providing care and support services with particular focus on dementia care.They came into existence in 2011 as a result of the dramatic closure of another provider. Initially to get them up and running we created a basic website for them, but in the long term they wanted a sleek, professional public face for the company that would grow with them, showing off the high quality of their care provision and giving their competitors a new benchmark to aim for.

We kicked off by talking to the people who would use the new site – staff and stakeholders – to understand what they needed it to do for them. We also checked out the healthcare providers’s competitors to find out how their online presence was structured, which parts of it were working best for them and which could be improved on. It also proved to be a bonus that we’d worked with other clients in the same field before – including CMG, New Care Homes and the NHS – giving us insight into some of the more complex issues involved.We had a great opportunity to deliver a Swiss Army Knife of a site – something versatile and well-designed with powerful hidden tools that internal sections of the organization could use for a variety of tasks, from content delivery to job searches. It had to be simple to use but complex in terms of what it delivered, and it had to cater to a diverse bunch of users, including the older generation searching for care homes, nurses and home managers looking for jobs, and investors and media looking for information and press releases.

PKD partnered with Sane and Able to deliver this vision, each bringing their own skills to the table. We provided the engine of the site, designing and building core content management tools and workflows to deliver the best possible user experience, plus all aspects of project management and strategic leadership whilst Sane and Able were responsible for the design of the front end of the website, developing the visuals within brand guidelines and resolving the key design and interface problems. It’s been a fruitful and ongoing working relationship that has allowed us to focus on the parts of the project that suited our in-house skills best. The finished site is a streamlined and transparent user experience that delivers complex information clearly to the people who need it.

An intuitive search tool for finding care homes that geo-locates users to give them the most relevant results.
Clear and easy-to-find information on each home.
Teams within the organisation are now able to update their parts of the website individually.
A focus on new company branding and messaging.
Content that demonstrates the quality of the new leadership.
Ability to share data with third party sites, making it easier to update information.

The new site has been returning great results for the client:

An increase in traffic of 135% in the last year
Processing a minimum of 100 job applications per day.
Serving a minimum of 250,000 page views a month.

Throughout this project, we worked to give the healthcare provider a future-proof site that would grow with them, allowing them to delegate control of their web presence across the organisation. Two years down the line, we’re still working alongside our partner agencies to develop new features and functionality for the client. We’ve launched new tools, including a fully-featured careers system that enables people to search for and apply for jobs online, tying into a comprehensive internal recruitment system and publishing jobs to third party websites.This project has added some strings to our bow at PKD too, giving us valuable experience of working with security constraints and third party systems, and within a clear brand strategy. We’re still working closely with HC-One to realise the full potential of their website as they develop their business.