Power of Women

POW represents a community of over 120,000 people. As the sole developer tasked on this project, I helped shape the design and developed the code for the Power of Women website.

A project designed to inspire girls across the Tees Valley with real stories, practical resources, and clear pathways into education and careers.

Power of Women corporate logo branding

Project overview

Delivered in collaboration with Allies Group and Tucan Studio, the site serves two audiences: girls aged 11–18 and inspiring women 18+. It’s designed to scale nationally with clear information architecture, accessible templates, and simple content operations.

Website goals

1,000 sessions in the first 30 days post‑launch
< 70% bounce rate, ~3 pages per session, ~2:00 time on page
100 sign‑ups from girls for story updates
50 new story submissions from inspiring women
Clear signposting to support organisations

Key requirements

The site surfaces engaging content through intuitive navigation and search. It also enables women to submit their stories for editorial review, and integrates a third‑party donations platform via API.

Content: long‑form stories, video, careers articles, and resources clustered by taxonomy.
Story upload: account creation, profile, media library integration (e.g., Unsplash), editor approval flow.
Donations: integrate selected provider via API once chosen.

Information architecture

Scalable sitemaps, clear content types, and site‑wide hierarchical taxonomies to drive discovery and relevance.

Content types: pages, stories/profiles, educative articles, updates, sign‑up/upload.
Taxonomies: age, subject area (by key stage), career options, education level, location.
Search: Algolia for fast, relevant filtering across Individuals, Sectors, Job types, Courses, Careers advice, Salaries, Apprenticeships, Mentors, Volunteering, and Internships.

Sitemap and taxonomy — Sitemap & taxonomy exploration

Design and content

Wireframes informed content layouts and user journeys across desktop and mobile. Designs were produced in Adobe XD with a focus on readability, media, and progression cues. Designed by Messila Watkinson.

Example design screens for the Power of Women site — Design - Adobe XD explorations

Development

Custom built PHP website and custom ReactJS Components built on WordPress CMS (Gutenberg) for flexible content blocks. Minimal plugins, editorial workflows, and strong accessibility and performance baselines.

Stack: PHP 7.2+, ReactJS, MySQL, AJAX, Custom built React Gutenberg editor.
Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AAA target.
Support: Latest 2 versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. Fully responsive.
Speed: Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) optimised; Lighthouse used for verification.

Development considerations and performance focus — Development - accessibility and performance first

Hosting and operations

Hosted on Katapult.io (ROCK‑12) with cPanel and CloudLinux. Traffic scaling, robust backups, and AWS S3 storage for restore points.

Server: 12 GB RAM, 4 vCores, 100 GB NVMe, 1 TB 10 Gbps bandwidth.
Backups: JetBackup to AWS S3 with differential/incremental strategies.
Traffic: scalable with load balancing for spikes.

Timeline

Four phased delivery:
Sitemaps and wireframes → design → development → go‑live.

In memory of late Professor Jane Turner (OBE DL)

It was an honour to help contribute to your vision.