When a Growing Network Outgrows Its Website
UBWIS Club grew from a small Edinburgh community to a UK-wide network of Ukrainian businesswomen — with branches in four cities and 150+ events. Their website hadn't kept pace. Here's how we rebuilt it.
Some organisations grow faster than their infrastructure can keep up with. UBWIS Club — Ukrainian Business Women in Scotland — is one of them.
Founded in 2022 to support Ukrainian women entrepreneurs who had relocated to Scotland, UBWIS Club grew quickly. Within three years, it had organised over 150 events, built a membership network across Edinburgh, Manchester, London, and Cambridge, and established itself as a genuine community hub for Ukrainian businesswomen in the UK.
Their website had not kept pace with any of that.
The Problem
When UBWIS Club first came to us, the picture was familiar: a website that had been built quickly to get the organisation online, but had not been updated as the club grew. It was:
- Slow to load, especially on mobile
- Difficult to navigate for new visitors
- Not structured for international membership pricing — the club charges differently by city and region
- Unable to scale without significant manual work
- Not maintained — no one was monitoring performance, security, or updates
Meanwhile, UBWIS Club was expanding fast. New city branches were launching. Membership was growing. The website needed to work internationally and give a professional first impression to partners, sponsors, and prospective members across the UK.
They didn't just need a new design. They needed a complete rethink of how the website supported the organisation.
What We Built
A faster, lighter website
The first priority was performance. We reduced the overall site weight by 60% — stripping out unnecessary code, optimising every image, and switching to fonts that matched the brand guidelines without adding licensing costs. The result was a site that loads quickly on any device, including mobile connections.
A clear membership structure
UBWIS Club has a tiered membership model with pricing that varies by location — running an event in London is not the same cost as running one in Edinburgh. We rebuilt the membership section to reflect this clearly, so visitors understand exactly what they're joining and at what price, without needing to contact the team to find out.
An onboarding journey that works
New members arriving at the site needed a clear path: who is this for, what do I get, how do I join? We restructured the user flow from the homepage through to registration, reducing the number of steps and making the decision easier for someone who has just discovered the club.
Scalable for international growth
With branches across multiple UK cities, the website needed to support growth without requiring a rebuild every time a new chapter launches. We structured the site so that new city pages and content can be added consistently, without breaking the overall experience.
Domain migration and security
We managed the full domain migration and set up DDoS protection, active monitoring, and 24/7 technical support. The organisation no longer needs to worry about the site going down before a major event.
The Result
The rebuilt UBWIS Club website is now a platform the organisation can confidently grow on. It presents the club professionally to sponsors and partners, makes it straightforward for new members to join, and handles the complexity of a multi-city membership structure without confusion.
"We're not just designers. We're specialists with 20+ years of experience in financial institutions — we know what modern looks like, and we know how to solve the problems that actually matter to a growing business." — Aldevon
UBWIS Club has since launched new branches in Cambridge and continues to expand. The website supports that growth rather than slowing it down.
What This Project Taught Us
Membership organisations have specific website needs that generic web design agencies often miss. The structure of how people join, what they see before they join, and how the organisation manages different tiers and locations — all of this has to be thought through carefully.
A website for a growing network is not a brochure. It is part of the infrastructure that makes the organisation function. Getting that right matters.
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Running a membership organisation, community, or club?
If your website isn't keeping pace with your growth — or if you've never had a site that properly reflects what you do — we'd be happy to talk through what's possible.
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