AChiPPP

Our website for AChiPPP - the Association of Child Psychologists in Private Practice went live at the end of October 2007.

The organisation is similar in nature to ASLTIP, but has its own unique challenges:

• ASLTIP is a mature organisation, AChiPPP just a year old
• ASLTIP has hundreds of members, AChiPPP has less than 100 members

As you would expect, fewer members means a smaller budget, so we've had to be smart about choosing the right functionality to give the greatest "bang for the buck".

Key Functionality

There's no Member Area. Instead, the functionality is focused on visitors to the website:

• For parents, there's a Postcode Search
• For solicitors (and child psychologists), there's a Member Directory. This is classified alphabetically, by region, and by professional area

Each AChiPPP member has a dedicated page on the website.

Postcode Search

The Postcode Search features prominently on the Home Page - visitors will have trouble missing it.

Postcode is the only information that is required to perform a search, so we expect (based on previous experience with ASLTIP) around two thirds of visitors to do so.

The system returns a list of Child Psychologists in order of proximity. We're very aware of the limitations of the 'as the crow flies' nature of the postcode search: it knows nothing about rivers, motorways, mountains (!) and other geographical features. For that reason, each of the search results shows the town where the psychologist is based. This allows the search to use his/her local knowledge to determine which are likely to be the easiest to visit.

There is also an advanced version of the Postcode Search, allowing parents to choose a specialist area. Options include:

• Autism spectrum
• Literacy/numeracy assessment
• Emotional/behavioural difficulties
• Attention deficit disorder

Visual Design

Here's how the old website looked on the most common monitor size (1024x768):

The new design maintains the overall feel but brings it right up to date.

Notice that all of the key elements are now within the visible area of the page.

For users with larger screens, there's an additional bonus: the news/event items move up and to the right: