Case study 02 · Training programme

From a broken form to a full cohort

A training programme’s website had one job: get the right people to sign up. Sign-ups had slowed, and the team wanted to know if the site stood in the way. It did.

At a glance

BuzzBronco audited a training programme’s sign-up website by hand and with scans across 8 areas of the site. We found a contact form that could not send, text below readable contrast and form fields without labels. Our team then carried out the fixes in 6 groups over the following two months. The client reports its next cohort filled.

8 areas

of the site audited by hand and with scans

6 groups

of fixes carried out by our team

Full cohort

the client reports, after the fixes

What stood in the way of sign-ups?

The programme’s website exists to fill each cohort. When sign-ups slowed, the team asked us to check if the site itself was turning people away.

How did we audit the site?

We went through the site area by area: header, footer, home page, course details, speakers, testimonials, news and contact. In each one we checked keyboard use, visual clarity, links, content, small screens and forms. We walked the client through every finding and showed side-by-side options wherever a fix changed how a page looked.

What did we find?

A contact form that could not send. It returned an error on submit. The client tried it and could not send a message either.
Hard-to-read text. White text on mustard and blue backgrounds, and grey text on white, all below the contrast WCAG requires.
Links that didn’t look like links. Several headings and calls to action gave no sign they were clickable.
Rotating panels. Content moved on its own, with hard-to-see arrows, which interrupts reading and traps keyboard users.
Unlabelled form fields. Only faint placeholder text, which disappears once you start typing.
Small blockers. Sideways table headings and two links that led nowhere useful.

How did we fix it?

We carried out the fixes ourselves, so the client never had to turn a report into developer tickets:

Visible keyboard focus and skip links
Text colours that meet WCAG AA contrast
Links that look different from body text
Alternative text for images and a proper heading structure
Static galleries in place of rotating panels, a second menu in the footer, and redirects for broken links
Labels on every form field, clearer error and success messages, and the form reconnected to the email platform
A redesigned mobile menu