Edinburgh Leisure plays a vital role in promoting active lifestyles across the city. Managing over 50 venues—including gyms, swimming pools, sports centres, and climbing walls—they provide inclusive access to fitness and wellbeing programmes for people of all ages and abilities. As a charitable trust, every penny earned is reinvested into improving the health and wellbeing of Edinburgh’s communities, particularly through targeted programmes for those who need it most.
When Edinburgh Leisure approached us to redevelop their website, the brief was clear: they needed a future-proof, user-friendly platform to better serve their customers, reflect their evolving digital needs, and improve operational efficiency. Their existing site, built on a bespoke CMS more than a decade ago, had reached end-of-life. It lacked flexibility, was difficult to maintain, and no longer met the expectations of modern users—especially when it came to booking classes and managing memberships online.
Deep Discovery: User Persona and Technical Workshops
At the outset, we facilitated comprehensive user persona workshops involving Edinburgh Leisure’s staff, customer service teams, and key stakeholders. These sessions helped us build detailed profiles of the website’s diverse users—ranging from young families and seniors to fitness enthusiasts and individuals participating in targeted health programmes. By understanding their motivations, challenges, and behaviours, we identified the key needs and pain points that the new website would have to address. This human-centred insight formed the foundation for all design and development decisions, ensuring the final product would truly resonate with its audience.
Parallel to this, we conducted a technical workshop focused on the existing infrastructure. This involved a thorough review of Edinburgh Leisure’s current CMS, booking system, and supporting technologies. By mapping out the current technical landscape and identifying limitations, we were able to provide expert advice on the most suitable future-proof technologies. We ensured the new solution would align with current best practices in online security, performance, and scalability. This technical groundwork was essential to architect a robust system that could integrate legacy systems where needed but remain flexible enough for future enhancements.
A Human-Centred Design Approach
Building on these insights, we crafted a mobile-first, responsive design that prioritised clarity, ease of navigation, and accessibility. Given the diverse customer base—including seniors, families, and people with additional needs—it was critical that the website be simple to use while still offering rich functionality. The new design features a cleaner interface, improved search and filtering tools, and clearer calls to action, making it easy for users to find venues, book activities, or get involved with health programmes.
A Modern Tech Stack with Long-Term Flexibility
On the development side, we moved away from the legacy bespoke CMS and implemented a modern, open-source content management system. This gives Edinburgh Leisure far more control and flexibility over content management, while ensuring the platform is secure, scalable, and easier to maintain long-term.
The back end was carefully architected to integrate with existing internal systems while remaining modular enough to support future expansion. Where possible, we used reliable and widely supported plugins to streamline development and reduce technical debt. Features such as analytics integration, real-time updates, accessibility compliance tools, and content scheduling were added to support both operational needs and user engagement.
Breakthrough Booking Integration
One of the most complex and rewarding aspects of the project was developing a bespoke integration with Edinburgh Leisure’s booking system Gladstone and Roller. The existing booking infrastructure was not designed for the kind of seamless, real-time online interaction that today’s users expect.
We engineered a custom middleware solution that acts as a bridge between the legacy booking system and a modern, intuitive front-end interface. This enables users to browse availability, book classes and activities, and manage bookings online with ease. This solution has been described as a “game changer” for Edinburgh Leisure and is now being explored for use by other organisations using the same backend booking system.
Launch and Impact
The new website launched successfully on time and on budget, with no disruption to service and overwhelmingly positive feedback from both users and staff. Initial analytics post-launch show significant improvements across all key metrics:
Bounce rate ↓
Session duration ↑
Online bookings ↑
Mobile traffic ↑
Customer support requests
The redesigned website has not only improved the user experience—it’s also helping Edinburgh Leisure deliver on its mission more effectively, enabling more people across the city to access vital health and fitness services.
Looking Ahead
This project is a great example of how thoughtful design and smart technical execution can create meaningful digital transformation. For Edinburgh Leisure, the website is now more than just an information hub—it’s a powerful, customer-focused platform that actively supports their charitable mission and operational goals.
We’re proud to have partnered with such a community-driven organisation and excited to see the long-term impact of this work. The bespoke booking solution, in particular, has the potential to benefit many similar organisations and is now available as a reusable integration across the sector.
To explore the new website visit: