Free Wills Month
We redesigned and rebuilt the Free Wills Month platform to support its mission of raising millions for charity through legacy giving. The new mobile-first site, built with Laravel and a modern frontend stack, delivers a streamlined user experience and continues to handle high traffic volumes with ease.
Client: Ashton Maund Associates
Sector: Fundraising
Services: Design, Development, Support
Designing a platform for giving — a decade of evolution and impact
A Long-Term Partnership
We first designed and built the Free Wills Month website in 2013, creating a bespoke platform to help streamline applications, increase visibility for the campaign, and support participating charities. Over the years, the platform proved resilient and effective, handling a high volume of traffic and processing hundreds of thousands of applications. But by 2023, with user expectations, digital behaviours, and accessibility standards evolving significantly, it was time for a fresh approach.
The new Free Wills Month platform wasn’t just a redesign — it was a ground-up rebuild informed by over a decade of performance data, user feedback, and sector experience.
Strategy, Research & Planning
We began the project with a full discovery and strategy phase, reviewing analytics, conversion funnels, and application drop-off points from the previous iteration. We also interviewed stakeholders from both the client side and the charities involved, to understand evolving needs and pain points.
One of the major insights was that mobile use had significantly overtaken desktop, yet much of the previous site’s structure and interaction design was still desktop-first. Users also expected smoother application flows, clearer messaging, and more robust support — all of which guided our decisions in the next phases.
We needed our campaign site to do more for us. We wanted to gather much more detailed information about our visitors to help us with future planning. This meant the whole interface had to change and a complicated back-end needed to be updated and improved. Jolora worked hard to understand our needs and surpassed our expectations.
Wireframing played a central role. Working in close collaboration with the client, we developed a full set of wireframes that mapped out the application process, solicitor directory, campaign messaging, and charity content. These wireframes formed the foundation of a highly iterative design process, all managed collaboratively within a shared Figma project.
A Collaborative, User-Centred Design Process
We treated design as a dialogue. Rather than producing static mockups and handing them over for review, we co-designed with the client, using Figma as a live workspace. This allowed stakeholders to see progress in real time, provide immediate feedback, and stay close to every design decision.
Accessibility and clarity were key priorities. The Free Wills Month audience spans a wide range of digital confidence levels, so we prioritised clear calls to action, large legible typography, mobile-friendly layouts, and robust WCAG compliance. The result is a clean, intuitive interface that makes applying fast and frustration-free — whether you're using a phone, tablet or desktop.
We also refreshed the visual identity while keeping the brand recognisable. Subtle evolutions to colour, layout and tone helped modernise the experience without alienating long-term users.
Robust, Scalable Development
The platform was rebuilt from scratch using the TALL stack — Laravel, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS, and Livewire — giving us the flexibility to deliver a fast, interactive experience without compromising on maintainability or performance.
Laravel provided a robust backend foundation for handling application logic, secure data management, and integration with internal and third-party services. Livewire enabled us to create dynamic front-end interactions directly within the Laravel ecosystem, cutting down on complexity while keeping the UI responsive and snappy. Paired with Alpine.js and Tailwind CSS, we were able to develop a fully custom interface with clean, performant code — without the overhead of heavier JavaScript frameworks.
Given the seasonal nature of the campaign, we knew the site needed to gracefully manage sudden surges in traffic — sometimes exceeding a 1000% increase in visitors in a single hour. To ensure reliability under pressure, the site is hosted on scalable infrastructure that auto-adjusts to demand, using containerisation and load balancing to maintain speed and uptime even during peak campaign launches.
We also integrated Plausible Analytics with a range of custom properties to provide rich, actionable insights while respecting user privacy. This lightweight, privacy-first platform allows the Free Wills Month team to monitor behaviour patterns, geographic distribution, device usage, and conversion trends — all without compromising data ethics or requiring intrusive tracking.
For content and data management, we implemented a powerful admin system using Laravel Nova. This provides the Free Wills Month team with a clean, user-friendly interface to manage campaign content, solicitor listings, scheduling logic, and performance data — all without needing technical assistance.
Security, accessibility, and maintainability were woven into every layer of the platform. Automated test coverage, continuous deployment pipelines, and robust audit logging ensure we can release updates confidently and respond quickly to any issues that arise.
Ongoing Support & Continuous Improvement
Our relationship with Free Wills Month doesn’t end at deployment. We provide comprehensive ongoing support to ensure the platform performs flawlessly during every campaign cycle — from uptime monitoring and security patching to performance tuning and feature enhancements.
Each campaign brings fresh data and insights, which we review in collaboration with the client to drive continuous improvement. Whether it’s refining the application flow, introducing A/B tested interface changes, or adapting to emerging accessibility standards, we’re constantly iterating to make the platform better with each passing year.
The success of the platform — measured not just in uptime and conversions, but in real-world impact for dozens of UK charities — makes it a project we’re incredibly proud to support.
A Platform That Delivers
Free Wills Month is more than just a website; it’s a platform that enables legacy giving at scale. Our long-standing partnership with the campaign is a testament to the value of ongoing collaboration, thoughtful design, and user-centred development.
By learning from the past and building for the future, we’ve helped create a tool that empowers generosity, strengthens charity funding, and makes the process of writing a will simpler for thousands of people every year.
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