Summary
Scroll delivered a customised day of training at the start of a website transformation project for Exeter city council. We had to quickly communicate the principles and best practice of user-centred content design to a group of stakeholders with very different roles, skills and interests.
The challenges
The council had gaps in its digital and content expertise, and didn’t have a structured content team. The team we were brought in to train was made up of employees from across the council, with different skills at different levels.
This meant we had to cover a lot of ground: training project managers in governanc, and newly-fledged content creators in content design and web writing.
This was a huge opportunity for the council to transform its content so it worked well for users, but a huge challenge for us due to the limited time available. We only had a day in which to leave the client with a framework to understand how to redesign content based on meeting their user needs.
The solution
We designed a bespoke training day for Exeter, using their data and analytics from the existing site. We thought it was critical to use live examples of problems with usability, IA and content in the training, so the team could put the learning into use straight away on real-world examples.
We focused the training on both the theory and practice of:
- team roles in a web transformation project
- content design
- using data in design
- tools and processes for web projects
- GOV.UK style, standards and the web transition experience
We also spent time giving the team tools to deal with some of the likely challenges the project would face. This kind of web transformation project requires cultural change in an organisation, and we helped the team model the framework for the governance that had to be in place for the project to succeed.
Results
Exeter said our training was ‘critical’ in the success of the project and in empowering the digital teams.
- 6,000 pages reduced to 1,000 – focused on user needs
- 50 content managers reduced to 6 – better content, produced faster and more easily
What the client says…
- “We had a pretty manic six months preparing content for our new site. But we got there and your input and advice was critical to achieving that – from content propositions to Trello and finding our way through GDS – so thank you. We will be continuing to review and refine our 1,000 pages (down from 6,000!) and improving the skills of our six content advisers (down from 50!).” Bruce Luxton, project lead
More of Scroll’s public sector work
As well as training the Exeter content teams, Scroll has worked on successful web transformation projects with Shepway District Council and a range of government departments and agencies, including Defra.
To see how we can work with you, please get in touch.
