The new website was launched on 12 March, along with Samaritans’ refreshed brand.
The website will be easy to use and accessible to a wide audience, including young people, with a clean, modern new look. It aims to give users a clear guide and an easy journey.
For example, all the emotional support information pages have been updated and now include a detailed guide about how you can help someone you are worried about.
The new website will enable us to support more people, and it has been informed by extensive research with our target audience, so that it is simple to use and reflects our updated brand.
Paul McDonald, Samaritans’ Executive Director of External Affairs,
Crafted to reflect the brand’s essence of human connection, the new website has been designed and developed by Torchbox, with support from Samaritans’ digital team and other Samaritans staff.
We’re delighted to launch the new Samaritans site today. It’s the first and most visible element of Samaritans’ digital transformation, an ambitious project to re-imagine their online services for people in crisis, volunteers and donors. Samaritans have been challenging, engaged and fun clients, and we’re really happy with what we’ve built together.
Tom Dyson, Technical Director of Torchbox
The website’s look will reflect the refreshed brand’s focus on raising the profile of Samaritans’ prevention and influencing work and encouraging more callers, volunteers, supporters and young people to connect.
In future, more digital support tools, such as online messaging and webchat, will be available to the site’s visitors. When Samaritans was founded in 1953, most people got in touch by phone or face to face at branches, but now people have much more choice about the methods they use to communicate.
The main brand colour will continue to be green, symbolic of positivity and hope, the updated logo includes subtle “notches” inspired by the focus on human connection, and the font, named Varah after Samaritans’ founder Chad Varah, was chosen for its distinctive personality and clean, curved lines.
The photographs have been chosen to tell powerful, real life stories which show moments that help people to connect with one another.
The refreshed website is at www.samaritans.org
