Summary
Shepway Council wanted to rework their entire website to bring it in line with current best practice in central and local government web content, at the same time as migrating it to a new platform.
Shepway chose Scroll to do this because of the experience our content designers have had on GOV.UK, and other government websites, designing user journeys and content based on user need.
The challenges
The structure and information architecture of the site needed to be reconsidered to improve user journeys.
As it was, users experienced a confusing journey that made it harder for them to interact with the site, find the information and services they wanted and complete the tasks they’d come to do.
On the page it was also hard for users to complete their tasks as the structure, language and design of the page were often unclear, counterintuitive and unhelpful.
About Shepway Council
Shepway is a local council. Its users need to interact with its website to fulfil a wide range of needs – from getting information to services and transactions. Their website has to succeed on a number of different levels to serve the complex needs of its users.
The solution
Scroll supplied a small team of content designers, and the content lead, to scope and deliver the work. The content lead conducted a high-level overview of the content followed by a more detailed content audit. The lead then designed an improved structure and IA for the content that was based around user needs and focused tasks.
Once the structure was improved attention was given to the content. The content team deleted unhelpful landing pages and edited their content according with best-practice principles and to:
- make content brief and to the point
- break up text into sub-headed sections
- use bullet lists
- ‘front-load’ sub-headings, titles and bullet points to put the most important information first
- include links to external sites and relevant pages
- use words that are easy to understand
- use active, not passive, voice
