Custom WordPress design and development for a clinical research organization
We partnered with CISCRP to overhaul their website, creating a flexible and intuitive experience. The new website supports both the general public in search of clinical research information and professionals exploring CISCRP’s industry-leading services.
About CISCRP
The Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation, or CISCRP, is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization based in Boston, MA. CISCRP’s core mission serves patients, families, and professionals navigating the ever-evolving and often-confusing clinical research industry.
By providing helpful, easy-to-understand resources for patients and families and trusted services for clinical trial professionals, CISCRP makes participating in clinical trials more friendly and accessible.
Services
Discovery & UX Research
UI/UX Design
Custom WordPress Development
API Integration
Accessibility Enhancements
Deliverables
Custom WordPress Theme
clinicaltrials.gov integration
HubSpot integration
Project goals
CISCRP approached us for help redesigning and managing their website and content library to better serve their two core audiences: 1. research professionals looking to purchase CISCRP's services, and 2. the general public in search of trustworthy information surrounding clinical trial participation.
Our goal was to build a site that was easy for the CISCRP team to manage, keeping these two distinct audiences at the strategic forefront throughout design and development.
Highlights & key features
Focused discovery
We began the CISCRP project with comprehensive discovery workshops. During these workshops, we interviewed every team at CISCRP, from sales and marketing to operations and leadership. As the interviews progressed, we gained a better understanding of team workflows, expectations, and unique pain points.
These vital, often detailed and contextually dense, interviews laid the groundwork for every decision that went into the site’s redesign and development. The discovery process also helped unify the CISCRP team around a shared vision for their new website and built trust in our ability to bring that vision to life.
Site structure: a tale of two audiences
The biggest pain point identified during our user research workshops was that CISCRP had two distinct audiences—research professionals and the general public—with very different needs, and the information architecture of the current site didn’t provide a clear path for either group.
To better serve both audiences, we built a split user experience into the homepage and primary navigation. This structural shift guides users down the correct path immediately, building their confidence and shortening the time it takes to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Visual identity that speaks to everyone
As a healthcare nonprofit, CISCRP’s visual identity needs to serve and appeal to both clinical professionals and the general public. To facilitate navigation for users from both audiences, we used structured layouts that compartmentalize content into attractive and digestible pieces.
In addition to the layouts, we employed clean and modern design elements that provide unobtrusive visual cohesiveness throughout the site. Plus Jakarta Sans, a crisp and approachable geometric sans serif font, conveys both scientific professionalism and friendliness, while minimalist and easily recognizable iconography supports the site's look and feel without distracting users.
CISCRP’s new visual identity demonstrates credibility and compassion, reflecting the organization’s commitment to clarity, trust, and support.
Powerful & flexible page-building
We created a custom WordPress theme that features a component building block system. Using Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), this system allows the CISCRP team to create freeform pages using a library of over fifteen components. Each block is completely customizable, from text to image to color scheme and beyond, distinguishing sections from one another for emphasis and intrigue.
Although page templates are provided in conventional WordPress themes, users are limited to editing certain fields, like “title” or “featured image.” The “building blocks” system we created is a more complete “page builder,” from which you build a page with no template, using whatever components you want. This process allows CISCRP’s admin team to build unlimited unique pages that work within accessibility standards and their design language.
Communication integration
One of CISCRP’s primary goals is continued education, access, and collaboration with patients and professionals navigating clinical trials. To help CISCRP manage its many contacts across these unique audiences, we integrated every form on the website with Hubspot, which its team already used to manage its email lists.
Now, any time a user submits a form on the website, the submission is automatically sent to Hubspot, where the CISCRP team can nurture relationships, manage recipients, and provide additional resources.
Clinical trials: Easier to access and manage
CISCRP’s Clinical Trials Concierge offers a personalized service to help patients and professionals find relevant clinical trials, but the process used to require time-consuming manual data entry.
To streamline this process, we connected the website’s search form directly to the ClinicalTrials.gov database. This connection sends user-submitted form information straight to the clinical trials database and automatically returns results sorted by medical condition, location, and more. This saves time, reduces errors, and allows the CISCRP team to focus on supporting patients and professionals on the frontline of clinical trials with compassion.
Custom collections for curated learning
We created a flexible “Collections” feature that allows the CISCRP team to curate related content around specific topics.
Each Collection serves as a focused hub, helping users explore complex subjects like clinical trials, study results, or rare diseases without becoming overwhelmed. CISCRP’s admin team can easily update and create new Collections, making it simple to highlight key resources and guide searchers to the most relevant information.
One library with all the answers
CISCRP has accumulated one of the largest collections of educational content on clinical trials, but users often struggled to find everything related to a specific topic. To help interested searchers better access information and resources, we created a unified content library.
The new library brings all formats together in one place, with filters for type, topic, format, region, and audience. Thanks to these filters, there is also a new “view more” section that displays more related resources at the bottom of each article, guiding researchers through their search and streamlining the process.
Smarter suggestions with contextual content logic
We added contextual logic to key areas of the site so users automatically see related content based on topic, tags, and audience.
These suggestions appear at the bottom of articles, collections, and guides, directing searchers to additional, relevant content. This feature encourages patients and professionals to continue exploring CISCRP’s vast content library.
The result
The new CISCRP website is more than a simple redesign: It’s a complete transformation of how the organization serves its audiences.
- Clinical research and healthcare professionals can now discover services more efficiently, while the public has a clearer and more welcoming path to the resources they need.
- Behind the scenes, the CISCRP team has everything they need to manage and grow their online content and web presence with ease: from a flexible page builder to smart integrations and audience-specific navigation, every part of the site is built with their mission in mind.
- Our ongoing partnership with CISCRP supports their work today and positions them for continued impact tomorrow and beyond.