How Pixeled Eggs Merged the European Respiratory Society's Websites

The European Respiratory Society (ERS) is Europe's largest respiratory society and one of the leading medical organisations in its field, with members in more than 160 countries. It offers respiratory professionals funding, learning, career development and a part in shaping public policy. Its website is central to recruiting and engaging members, promoting events and sharing knowledge.

The Challenge

The society's digital footprint had fragmented across many websites built on different technologies. They were hard and costly to maintain, and members met an inconsistent brand and sites that were difficult to navigate. The new site had to raise awareness, drive membership and event registrations, and increase engagement with members.

The Approach

Research. Pixeled Eggs ran business and membership interviews, surveys and desktop research to define user personas and needs, then audited the content and set out the information architecture and UX.

Testing at Congress. The structure was developed iteratively with prototyping and user testing, including in-person testing at the ERS International Congress, so a diverse group of the audience shaped the decisions directly.

A design system. Digital brand guidelines and a flexible library of templates, modules and components let ERS assemble pages for different users and journeys while keeping the brand consistent. The site is planned in phases over three years, and the system makes new sections and services, such as the new ERS Channel, quicker and cheaper to build.

The Outcome

The new WordPress site brings three separate sites (the main ERS website, ERS Congress and ERS Vision) under a single domain, and is easy to keep up to date. In its first month, compared with the year before, page views rose 36%, pages per session 37% and time on site 20%. Bounce rates fell by 10%, and click-through rates from search doubled.