Mercian Collaboration

The Challenge

Mercian Collaboration is the professional network for higher education libraries across the East and West Midlands. Their public site and content store - news, events, conferences, groups, and member resources - needed a full redesign and migration onto a modern platform. The old experience was hard to navigate; staff and members needed clearer information architecture, an accessible interface for a public-sector education audience, and a CMS they could keep updating without specialist help.

Our Approach

• Migrated the existing website and database content into a modern WordPress build on Pendulum's theme framework - preserving news, events, conference archives, activities, and key documents through structured content modelling.
• Redesigned navigation and page layouts around how members actually use the network: find the conference, book events, read news, and reach the right group or contact without digging through legacy menus.
• Built a clean, brand-aware UI with responsive layouts and editorial patterns that hand off cleanly into day-to-day content management.
• Treated accessibility as part of the rebuild - semantic structure, keyboard-friendly navigation, and WCAG-oriented patterns suited to a UK higher-education membership organisation.
• Delivered searchable archives and clear content types so conference years, events, and news remain easy to browse as the programme grows.

The Outcome

merciancollaboration.org.uk now runs on a modern, easy-to-navigate WordPress site with migrated content from the previous system. Members can find conferences, events, news, and group activities through a clearer UX; editors manage content in structured fields rather than fighting a legacy layout. The rebuild gives Mercian an accessible public face that matches how a Midlands HE library network actually works.

Key Takeaways

• Regional library networks need IA designed around programmes and people - not a dump of migrated pages.
• Content migration only succeeds when the new CMS model matches how staff publish day to day.
• Accessibility and redesign should ship together on public-sector education sites - not as a later pass.