Consolidating 7 websites, with over 1,475 web pages, into 588 pages on one, user-focused platform designed with care to give users clarity.
The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) is the regulatory body for veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses in the UK. It sets and maintains standards of veterinary education, professional conduct, and practice, ensuring that the public can have confidence in the professionals who care for their animals.
Challenge
The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ digital estate had grown unwieldy over time, comprising multiple websites, some with separate visual identities: the main RCVS site, Find a Vet, Animal Owners, Mind Matters Initiative, ViVet, VN Futures, and Vet Futures. This fragmented approach created significant challenges for both users and the internal team tasked with managing it.
The main RCVS website was fifteen years old and showing its age. Uptime was poor and navigation was confusing. Crucially, the site's structure reflected the organisation's internal departments rather than user needs. The information architecture had vital resources and guidance buried deep into the navigation. For veterinary professionals who might need to quickly reference guidance during a time-sensitive situation, this could be a huge source of frustration.
The visual design across the estate felt dated. Mobile navigation was poor, and inconsistent design patterns across different parts of the site undermined user confidence. Meanwhile, the content team had to deal with managing multiple sites, each with separate logins, permissions, and workflows.
Approach
The overarching aim was to provide a clear, modern, user-focused site. We recommended consolidating the separate sites into a single, unified platform. This approach would not only save RCVS considerable resources and reduce complexity, but would also create a far more effective experience for users by bringing everything together in one place.
Our approach was shaped by trauma-informed design principles. The evidence showed that many people visiting the RCVS website, particularly the public-facing sections, would be doing so during moments of significant stress or distress. Someone searching for a vet may have a seriously ill pet. Someone looking up complaint procedures may have experienced a challenging situation. This informed every design decision we made.
The resulting design is intentionally simple and information led. We stripped away unnecessary complexity to help users find what they need quickly, without adding to their cognitive load during difficult moments. The aesthetic is calm and clear, with plenty of space for content to breathe.
We incorporated the RCVS’s refreshed brand identity, including their new shield logo, throughout the design. The shield shape appears subtly across the site, including as a treatment applied to imagery. This creates a cohesive visual language without being overwhelming. It is a design that feels modern and professional while remaining approachable.
To inform the site's structure and content, we consulted with subject matter experts from across the RCVS. These conversations helped us understand what each department truly needed from the website and, importantly, what they did not. This allowed us to make confident decisions about cutting unnecessary content that didn’t serve user needs, resulting in a leaner, more focused site.
Accessibility was central to the project. The new site meets WCAG AA standards, ensuring that all users can access the information and services they need.
The new Drupal content management system gives the RCVS team far greater flexibility and control over their content. Instead of managing separate systems with different logins and permissions, everything is now consolidated into a single, streamlined workflow. Site search has also been transformed. The old system could take ten seconds to return results; the new search is fast and effective, helping users find what they need without frustration.
Information Architecture
We fundamentally restructured the site's information architecture, moving from a task-based navigation that reflected internal organisational structures to a user-based navigation that divides a large and complex site by user group, to make it more manageable.
The new structure funnels users into resources designed specifically for their needs, with the primary navigation split by audience: veterinary professionals, practices, students, and animal owners. This works particularly well for the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons because there is very little overlap between these user groups. A veterinary professional searching for CPD requirements has entirely different needs from an animal owner looking for guidance on how to make the most of their veterinary appointment. For more guidance on information architecture types, see our article on topic-based vs audience-based information architectures.
This audience-led approach makes a large and complex site far more digestible. Resources that were previously scattered across separate subdomains are now easy to find within a single, coherent structure.
We validated the new information architecture via extensive Treejack testing with over five hundred participants, including 394 veterinary surgeons. This rigorous testing gave us confidence that the structure would work for real users in real situations, not just on paper. The testing revealed that users found the information they needed first-time in 74% of cases with the new information architecture, a big increase on the previous design.
AI tools
RCVS is a content-heavy organisation and managing that content on the website had become an enormous burden for their team. As part of the project, we provided a suite of AI-powered tools within Drupal to help them manage their content more efficiently.
The redevelopment of the information architecture and reduction in reliance on PDFs also makes the website far more GEO-friendly. By structuring content clearly by user need and surfacing information directly on the site (rather than locking it away in PDFs), the site is easier for search engines and AI systems to understand and interpret. This creates stronger foundations for content to be accurately referenced, summarised, and surfaced in AI-driven experiences such as Google’s AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
These tools assist with various aspects of content management, helping the team work smarter and achieve more with the same resources. Read our article for more information on our Drupal AI content tools.
What the client says
“The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has benefited from Numiko’s experience and expertise of working with information-dense, complex organisations. We took a one-team approach to this project, making sure Numiko were fully integrated with our team to help them understand the uniqueness of our organisation and variety of our audiences. Their focus has been on developing true insight into our world, identifying what our users’ needs are and how to make the information as accessible as possible. We’re delighted to see our new website come to fruition and look forward to continuing to work in partnership with Numiko into the future.”