Rebuilding a domestic abuse charity’s website so it serves those who need advice, stakeholders, and donors in one user-friendly site.

The problem

My CWA supports people across Cheshire who are experiencing domestic abuse. It’s the kind of charity where the website isn’t a nice-to-have. For some people, it’s the first safe place they go to find out whether what’s happening to them is abuse, and what they can do about it.

The old site had grown into something very difficult to navigate. Over time, multiple well-meaning contributors had added pages and content without any overall editorial control. Nobody had done anything wrong: it was a classic too-many-cooks situation in a busy charity where website governance isn’t anyone’s full-time job. But the cumulative effect was a confusing, inconsistent structure with broken buttons, mismatched layouts, and no clear path through the content.

For most websites, that’s an annoyance. For this one, it was a genuinely serious problem.

Someone in an abusive situation who arrives on a chaotic website and can’t quickly find the information they’re looking for doesn’t wait around. They close the tab.

The platform decision

My CWA already had four websites sitting on Squarespace. Moving one of them to a different platform without good reason would have created unnecessary complexity for their team: different logins, different interfaces, different ways of doing things. There was no strategic benefit in disrupting that.

So we worked within Squarespace. This was our first major project on the platform, and it was a deliberate choice to meet the client where they were rather than where we were most comfortable. A good web partner is platform-agnostic. The right platform is the one that makes sense for the client’s organisation - not the one the agency knows best.

The challenge

The brief had three distinct audiences who needed completely different things from the same website, and each of them needed to be served without compromise.

People in abusive situations researching their options, often discreetly, often on a phone, often with limited time before someone notices what they’re looking at. For this group, the site needed to be fast, clear, and safe to use.
Professionals and referral partners - social workers, GPs, police, other charities - looking for service information, referral pathways and resources to share with clients.
Volunteers and donors looking to support the charity to continue to deliver these important services through fundraising and donations.

Designing for all at once, without cluttering the experience for each, required proper information architecture from the ground up. Not tweaks to the existing structure, this was a full rethink of what goes where and why.

There was also a third consideration that sits underneath both audiences: digital safety. For a person researching domestic abuse support at home, the act of visiting the website itself carries risk if someone checks their browsing history or walks in unexpectedly. Every design decision had to account for that.

What we did

FULL CONTENT REVIEW AND RESTRUCTURE

We went through the entire site page by page, making editorial decisions about what to keep, what to consolidate, what to rewrite and what to cut entirely. The goal was a logical, calm structure that guides each audience to what they need without asking them to hunt for it. Every page earned its place.

SAFETY-FIRST DESIGN FEATURES

Two features in particular reflect the specific reality of My CWA’s audience.

The quick exit button lets a visitor leave the site instantly (one click, gone, redirected to a neutral page) if someone comes into the room or they need to close it quickly. It’s a small button that takes seconds to build and could matter enormously to the person who needs it.

Resources on the site are viewable online rather than downloadable. That’s a deliberate choice. A PDF saved to a device shows up in downloads. A page viewed in a browser is far easier to clear from history. For someone in a monitored household, that distinction is the difference between the site being usable and it not being.

AIMEE AI SUPPORT BOT

We embedded the Aimee AI support bot into the site to help visitors navigate to relevant information quickly. For someone who arrives overwhelmed or unsure where to start, having a guided entry point rather than a menu to decipher makes an immediate practical difference. Aimee is built specifically for domestic abuse services — it’s not a generic chatbot bolted on for the sake of it.

ACCESSIBILITY THROUGHOUT

Accessibility wasn’t an afterthought. Clear typography, sufficient contrast, logical reading order, mobile responsiveness - all standard on any Web Goddess project, and especially important here where the audience may be accessing the site quickly, under stress, on a phone with a cracked screen in poor lighting. The site has to work in real conditions, not ideal ones.

ONGOING MONTHLY MANAGEMENT

We manage the site on a monthly retainer. My CWA’s services, referral pathways and resources change as the organisation grows and responds to need. Having proper ongoing support means the site stays accurate, secure and functional so the team can focus on the work rather than the website.

The result

My CWA now has a website that works for the people it exists to serve. The navigation is clear. The content is structured. The safety features are in place. Someone arriving in a difficult moment can find what they need without the site getting in their way.

For the My CWA team, the ongoing retainer means they’re not carrying the burden of website management on top of everything else they do. Content updates, security, functionality - we handle it all. They focus on supporting people across Cheshire. We keep the website running properly behind them.

This project also marked a significant milestone for Web Goddess -> our first major Squarespace build. Proving that our strategy-first approach translates across platforms, not just the ones we’ve always worked on, matters. The right solution for a client is never “what we know best.” It’s what actually fits their organisation.

Why it worked

Most websites get designed around what the organisation wants to say. This one had to be designed around what a specific person in a very specific, very difficult situation needs to find - quickly, safely, without leaving a trace if necessary.

That requires a different kind of thinking. Not just UX in the abstract sense, but genuine empathy for the real circumstances of the people on the other side of the screen. The quick exit button and the no-download resources aren’t clever features. They’re the result of actually thinking through what it’s like to use this website when your safety might depend on doing so discreetly.

We’re proud of this one. It’s the kind of project that reminds you why getting website design right actually matters.

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