Air Ambulances UK

Air Ambulance UK (AAUK) recognised the need for a new website that would reflect its national presence, enhance storytelling, and clearly communicate the value it brings to the air ambulance community. We delivered what is a powerful, high-performing digital platform to match the scale of its national mission.

The new site needed to clearly position the organisation as the national voice of air ambulance charities, support its mission to attract and grow partnerships, membership and visibility, be accessible, intuitive, future-proof and easy to manage, make the most of improved written content and a refreshed brand and drive engagement through storytelling, user journeys and content flexibility.

We worked closely with AAUK to understand its goals, users and internal capacity, and delivered a modern, modular WordPress website tailored to its needs. Critically, what the AAUK team needed most was flexibility to create engaging layouts, maximise the use of its rich and varied content.

AAUK is the national charity representing and supporting the lifesaving work of 21 individual air ambulance services across the UK. Its website was struggling to support its modern content, accessibility, SEO and audience engagement needs. Despite updates and visual improvements, technical limitations, workarounds and performance issues were negatively affecting usability, visibility in search, and the overall digital experience.

Discovery & Planning

We gathered requirements and using user stories mapped user journeys across all core audiences, identifying key content types (e.g. patient stories, events, partnerships) and how they could be structured for maximum engagement. This process informed a simplified site architecture, with clearly signposted pathways for partners, members and media.

Design & Build

We delivered a bold, engaging design that feels clean, modern and purpose-led. 

A key feature of the new site is a richly designed master content template that gives AAUK the flexibility to create visually engaging pages across the site. Its modular structure includes a wide range of content blocks and styling options such as choice of colour variants and background patterns, that allow the team to create layouts to suit the content and context. Whether for storytelling, information-sharing or promotion, each page can be dynamically tailored to its purpose – all from a single, versatile template.

To enhance usability and functionality, we implemented Algolia for fast, intelligent global search, and for filtering content in the news and events sections. We also deployed Gravity Forms, giving AAUK a robust, easy-to-manage system for both pre-styled forms and the creation of new ones on the fly as needed – all consistent with the site’s visual identity.

Everything has been developed to enable AAUK’s  in-house team to easily update content, including patient stories with video and imagery options, event pages, partner spotlight sections with space to share stories and outcomes, dynamic modules to keep content fresh. The new site is fully responsive, SEO-optimised, accessibility-compliant (WCAG 2.1 AA and using Recite-me), and designed with performance, search and engagement in mind.

A future-proofed WordPress build

Built on WordPress, the CMS offers intuitive management, scalable functionality and complete ownership by the AAUK team. It’s designed to evolve with the charity’s needs, including the option to broaden its content formats such as video, VR experiences and impact graphics over time.

The resulting new website positions AAUK with clarity and confidence, and enables the organisation to showcase its role and value to national partners, promote the collective impact of the UK’s air ambulance charities, tell more powerful stories through flexible, multimedia content, provide a better, faster, and more accessible user experience, lay strong digital foundations for future growth, engagement and funding.