Autism SA

A single source of truth for information about Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The Brief

Creating a website to act as the single source of truth for information about Autism Spectrum Disorder in Australia.

After losing its funding to maintain a popular hotline for families seeking information about autism, Autism SA engaged Fuller to develop a national website that would provide essential information to Australian families about Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Working with Autism SA and the autistic community, Fuller created a brand identity for the website, wrote over 200,000 words of content, produced a welcome video featuring people with lived experience of autism, and designed and developed the website, all within a five-month period.

To ensure families searching for answers on the internet could find the information they needed, Fuller’s digital team built the website to the highest technical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) standards. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 compliance was also achieved, to ensure accessibility.

 

STRATEGY

Nothing about us, without us.

This co-designed project engaged a number of advisors who were on the autism spectrum to oversee all facets of the project – from the brand, name and colours; through to website design and content creation. The philosophy of “nothing about us, without us” was employed throughout the entire project.

The website – named The Spectrum – was designed to reflect ‘an open book of information’, with a disability-friendly brand system and user-centric website information architecture.

Search engine keyword research, interviews with the autistic community and staff from Autism SA, as well as hotline data, informed the content plan, with a long-form content strategy employed to increase Google search rankings.

In partnership with autistic advisors, Fuller wrote 35 pages (over 200,000 words) of content to answer key questions most likely to be asked about autism, with sub-navigation and meta descriptions, all of which were optimised for keywords to boost SEO.

It was important to Autism SA that an autism diagnosis wasn’t portrayed as ‘negative’, but rather a unique and important way of thinking. As such the tone of all content produced for The Spectrum was ‘hopeful and helpful’.

Fuller also filmed and produced a welcome video for the website, where members of the autism community and their families shared lived experiences of their autism journeys.

RESULTS

The Spectrum was launched in October 2019, meeting the full requirements of the Government tender.

  • 1,300,000

    Visitors since The Spectrum’s launch, through to December 2022.

  • 1:10

    Average time on site in one session.

  • 40

    Authority score of 40 despite no backlinking post go-live.

  • 70

    More than 70 keywords ranking number one on Google.

  • 500

    More than 500 keywords ranked within the first five answers on Google.