Why we updated Neon - to make it even easier to use!
By Dan Powell, Head of Neon, EngineeringUK
Head of Neon, Dan Powell, talks about the recent changes made to the website and the research that went into the updates.
When we launched Neon in 2019, we wanted to make a website that made it easy for educators to find and book the best quality engineering careers activities. Since then, we’ve regularly checked in with our teachers and careers leaders, and used website data to make sure Neon is working for them.
We want Neon to enable teachers to introduce their students to future STEM careers, raise their aspirations and explore the excitement of engineering and technology. We do this by hosting quality assured activities by over 100 different activity providers.
Towards the end of 2023 we identified an issue. We could see that lots of teachers were visiting Neon, and we knew from feedback that they liked the site and that they were looking at the activities we list. But it was clear that we were not getting as many referrals click throughs to our activity providers as we could be.
We are fortunate that the Neon Content Manager, Emm, had recently taken a sabbatical during which she completed a course in user experience design. Emm used her new skills to conduct interviews with teachers about how they use Neon, and she used our annual check in with teachers to gather supporting data.
Emm’s research showed that we needed to make the booking journey on Neon smoother. We could also see from website data that the fortnightly Neon newsletter was a big driver for visits to the site.
To help us understand how we could do this, we next consulted organisations we work with to see what they thought. Based on their feedback and our research with teachers we ran a series of workshops to help us decide what we should do next.
The next step was to work with Etch, our development partners, to make the changes we identified. I am delighted to say that we rolled out the following updates in late October:
- Teachers and careers leaders don’t need to be logged in to their account to visit a partner website. To do this we have introduced a few easy-to-use checks that ensure that the activity is available at the teacher's school
- We have a new way of signing up for the Neon newsletter on the Neon homepage
We also identified several other ways we could help teachers, including:
- Adding more free, in-school activities to Neon. We’re currently working with partners to ensure we can source inspiring face to face experiences
- Developing a Neon Champions scheme. We now have 20 teachers around the UK who are committed to helping us promote Neon and help educators get the most out of it. We will be recruiting more over the coming year. Get in touch with us on [email protected] if you would like to chat about becoming a Neon Champion
- Adding more testimonials to the activities on Neon, as we know that peer to peer recommendation is important to teachers
We think that this new approach will make Neon even more useful for teachers and careers leaders and drive up the number of young people who take part in one of the brilliant experiences we host on Neon.
