The National Governance Association chooses Mentor Digital as design and technology agency partner
School governors' organisation the National Governance Association has announced the appointment of Bristol-based Mentor Digital as its digital agency partner for a series of upcoming high profile digital projects.
Following a highly competitive and extensive procurement process, led by technical procurement experts Hart Square, Mentor Digital was chosen as the winning bidder to deliver a new website, CMS solution, and CRM integration for NGA.
Alongside the UX and website build project, Mentor Digital has also been selected by NGA in a separate tender process to deliver a full rebrand of the organisation including a new logo, style guide, and branding guidelines document.
These projects will help NGA to deliver its ambitious digital strategy and will develop a solid foundation both creatively and technically for NGA and Mentor Digital to build upon in partnership over the coming years.
The National Governance Association is the membership organisation for governors, trustees and clerks of state schools in England and Mentor Digital will design and develop a new CMS and website to support the organisation’s 75,000 members.
The project will include brand new information architecture and website design, along with new UX and user journeys to provide an excellent experience for members as they are onboarded, renew their memberships, and take advantage of the many excellent services that NGA provides.
Mentor Digital’s managing director Holland Risley (pictured) said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been chosen by NGA for this project. The whole team has been great to work with during the procurement process, and we are really excited to be adding such a prestigious membership organisation to our client portfolio.”
NGA provides members with CPD and training opportunities along with an extensive e-learning offering through its highly popular Learning Link subscriptions.
"During the tender process the NGA was impressed by Mentor Digital’s award-winning e-learning work for the National Composites Centre.
"Integrating e-learning platforms is a large and exciting part of this project, and Mentor Digital presented a strong ability to deliver solutions to NGA’s challenging requirements.
As with all major membership organisations NGA has a Customer Relationship Management system that needs to be seamlessly integrated with the new website.
Mentor Digital’s team is highly experienced at integrating third party CRM systems with front end websites and have many high-profile case studies of doing very similar projects with major membership organisations, including Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS), Equity (the artists union), and Research in Practice.
To develop a website of this scale requires an in-depth process of stakeholder engagement, user research, design, and prototyping.
Mentor Digital will lead an extensive series of discovery workshops with NGA and its members before producing fully mobile responsive prototypes as part of the project process to allow for the new website to be fully user tested using mobile devices and desktops.
Mentor’s UX testing team carries out mobile device guerrilla testing with specialist cameras for mobile devices and desktop UX testing, with its eye tracking suite, to ensure that all interfaces and journeys are intuitive and clear when used by real world users.
The websites will be developed using the open-source Umbraco CMS platform, which provides highly secure, enterprise level, content management experiences with no ongoing licenses.
Mentor Digital is an Umbraco Gold Partner and has implemented Umbraco CMS for many NHS Trusts and CCGs along with a wide range of B2B and B2C clients.
