Streamlining and simplifying sports council content

Sport Wales wanted to rebuild their web presence from the ground up. We helped completely rewrite and reshape their web content, with a focus on audience and clarity.

Background

Sport Wales are the national organisation responsible for developing and promoting sport and physical activity in Wales. They're main aim is to create a more active, healthier Wales. They do this through:

• funding, from grassroots to elite athletes
• collaborating with national, local and educational partners
• supporting athletes, coaches and teachers with expert advice and resources

However, these purposes and aims had become unclear on their website. From a confusing menu structure to bloated and out of date content. Website visitors were struggling to find the content they needed. And Sport Wales were muddying the most important help and messages they wanted to share.

Brief

Sport Wales tasked us with rewriting and restructuring their entire web content. In both English and Welsh. They were keen to adopt a plain language approach throughout, in both languages. And gave us a refreshingly open remit to pare back and simplify their content.

Before we started on the work, the Sport Wales digital team had already laid some great groundwork. They had:

• identified where their information architecture (menu and navigation) could be made clearer and more logical
• got a good understanding of what their users needed
• made decisions on what content could be removed completely
• briefed content owners and stakeholders, ensuring everyone was on the same page from day 1 of our involvement

What we did

We started by identifying any repeated issues and challenges across the site. We found that a lot of the content was:

• lacking in clarity on who the intended audience was
• focused too much on organisational processes rather than the useful, audience-relevant outputs of those processes
• outdated, particularly in unnecessary FAQs
• not written in plain language
• spread across multiple pages needlessly
• duplicated from external partner websites

Content bloat

Like many other large, multi-faceted organisations, Sport Wales's website had become bloated over time. This often happens when an organisation focuses on internal rather than user needs when deciding whether to put content online. When there isn't a clear content governance in place that asks: "Who is going to read this content? What do they need to know? What do they not need to know?".

Sport Wales also has a large network of partner organisations that they support and collaborate with. Content on these partner websites was being reproduced, often verbatim, on the Sport Wales website. Naturally this was leading to more bloat. So as part of our transformation work, we ensured we kept all content focused on what Sport Wales uniquely provides. And linked out to partner websites when necessary.

"The painful truth for any public sector organisation is that people usually don't want to spend any more time on your website than they have to."

There were also numerous incidents of content being spread across multiple pages. Making it harder for users to quickly find the information they need. The painful truth for any public sector organisation is that people usually don't want to spend any more time on your website than they have to. We ruthlessly culled and condensed content like this into single pages. Using sidebar navigation and accordions, where needed, to help aid navigation and reduce cognitive overload.

Information about a single meeting space at Sport Wales's National Centre in Cardiff spread across 3 pages on their old website. We condensed this and 12 other similar pages into a single page on the new website.

Outdated content

Along with bloat, a lack of governance can also lead to content quickly becoming out of date. It's jarring as a user to read something that is clearly referring to something in the past as 'upcoming'. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in that most over-used of content crutches - the FAQ.

FAQs (frequently asked questions) are rife with problems when it comes to effective, user-focused content. They often:

• duplicate content from elsewhere on the website
• can easily become out of date
• cannot be front-loaded - headings should start with the most important information first
• aren't worded in a way users actually speak, but in a way an organisation wants

Basically, no one ever goes to an FAQ as their first port of call. You look for the information you're after where you expect to find it. And that's were we should put it. For the Sport Wales website, this meant ensuring that every section of the website clearly covered the user needs for that area of the organisation. And was written in a future-proof way.

Consistency

Consistent styling and structure can make a subtle, but significant difference to how easy content is to scan, read and understand.

For this work, this included things like:

• using sentence case for headings
• only capitalising things that are proper nouns, such as organisations
• not phrasing headings as questions
• ensuring hyperlinks clearly indicate what a user is going to get when they click them
• using bullet lists consistently to simplify and break up content
• using 'we' and 'us' when referring to Sport Wales - more direct and takes ownership

We also helped iterate the website's information architecture as we worked on the content. Ensuring that sections of the website had consistent, unambiguous headings. Helping users get to the right information, at the first try.

We also ensured content used plain English and Welsh, aiming for as low a reading age as possible. And providing the exact same user experience in both languages. We brought our Welsh translator on early to ensure she understood the context and aims of the project. Welsh content was translated and iterated throughout the project, not just at the end. An approach we've taken in other work with Welsh public sector organisations.

Before and after comparison of content readability using Hemingway. We used active voice and a bullet list to change a 'very hard to read' sentence into content with a readability age of 10 years old.

Results

We worked in collaboration with Sport Wales's digital team and various content owners and stakeholders. Keeping them in the loop throughout the project, with frequent interaction and show and tells. Stakeholders were engaged and positive, with the Governance team at Sport Wales noting they "really liked how [we] managed to condense [the content] down. It looks great!".

The new website, with its entirely transformed content and structure, went live in April 2026. The digital team at Sport Wales were effusive in their praise for our efforts. Paul Batcup, Digital Programme Lead, said, "[Marvell] didn't just rewrite content - [they] challenged us, guided us and helped us think differently about how we communicate." He added that the website "launched on time, exactly as planned months earlier. And a big part of that was down to the quality of the content design."

Feedback

"[Marvell] challenged us, guided us and helped us think differently about how we communicate." Paul Batcup, Digital Programme Lead, Sport Wales

"We really liked how you have managed to condense this down. It looks great!" Governance team, Sport Wales

Future

Since our initial involvement, we have been working with Sport Wales to improve the content and user experience for their Energy Saving Grant funding scheme. The organisation are keen to continue collaborating with us as they aim to make all their digital interactions as user-focused and friendly as possible. They note, "We'd absolutely work with Marvell again. They delivered high-quality work, were great to work with and played a key role in helping us get this project over the line."