The launch of a new website for The Information Centre for Health & Social Care marks a significant step in the development of their online offering: www.ic.nhs.uk. Since we were commissioned in October 2006 we have been working to create an online presence that will be the site of choice for information on health and social care.

Claire Hurst, Head of Marketing and Communications for The Information Centre said, "Precedent has been integral in bringing our initial web strategy to life. They've helped us to create a website that is engaging and accessible both for NHS staff and the general public - it's a wealth of well organised information."

The Information Centre had been tasked with improving the way data is gathered and represented. With our help they have developed a more user-focussed site, with an accessible structure. We improved the overall design of the site as well as restructuring the information throughout. We also implemented their bespoke content management system WebPilot.

The previous website was heavily loaded with a lot of information and statistical data. Our challenge has been to not only design a site that would be interesting and attractive to users, but also to successfully structure and manage a huge amount of information.

The initial launch of the website has been a great success. In its first full month the new site had 77,000 visits compared to the monthly average of 32,000 on the old site!

The launch of the new website is the first of a two stage process: We will now be working on building a series of interactive elements into the website. We're keen that the next step for this project adds value to the users' online experience - that will really set this website head and shoulders above others within the industry.

The site was recently short listed for the prestigious best health website award by the Association of Healthcare Communicators 2007.

www.ic.nhs.uk