Website project

Discovery

We ran a discovery phase to understand the problems that needed to be solved. We found that: 

• The wording of sections, services and information in the site could be improved to aid search engine optimisation and the user journeys within the site
• Navigation was excessive, confusing and out-of-step with how users find information on the website
• The site was burdened by the large volume of content and pages, many of which see relatively little use, with impacts on both users and support staff
• Some services have clear, predictable patterns of usage responding to knowable events/triggers
• The website design should be responsive to changing customer needs
• Site style and design needed to be modernised
• There is a clear expectation that the site will signpost to other organisations and authorities, without wrongly drawing users to our site in the process
• The old content management system platform would have presented design choices and potential restrictions that will have had implications for our website offering and the user experience
• There is a lack of understanding across the organisation of website performance
• The website should be providing more end-to-end services for customers
• There is widespread recognition of existing issues with a devolved method for managing content

You can read more about our findings and recommendations in our discovery report.

Design and development

Visual design

We worked with a design agency, Redweb, to create a new design system that was recognisably Rushmoor. They created five concept pages to illustrate the new design:

• Home page
• Hub page
• Content page
• Form page

Information architecture

We also worked with Redweb to improve how we organised our content. They helped us review the site's taxonomy and test a draft information architecture with our customers, using common tasks. 

The outputs included a draft taxonomy that we improved on, based on our own customer experiences and feedback.

Content management software

We use content management software so that our content writers and editors can focus on writing great content instead of writing code.

We decided to move from using our old content management software to Umbraco because:

• It was much easier to configure and customise to meet our requirements
• It has better developer support, documentation, and training 
• More people are familiar with using Umbraco than Goss
• The use of open and common standards gave us greater opportunity to hire people and procure suppliers to help us
• The user interface is better and designed for use on different devices
• It would cost us less

Content review

We are reviewing and updating our content to make sure that it is:

• The right type of content to be on our website
• Easy to find and understand
• Accessible
• Consistent
• Meeting the needs of our customers

We have updated content for these services:

• Recycling and rubbish
• Customer services
• Parking
• Regeneration
• Councillors
• Council tax
• Climate change

We are working on these services now:

• Keeping Rushmoor clean
• Parks, outdoors and leisure

Accessibility audit

We worked with Diginclusion to audit our compliance with the accessibility regulations and to make the website more accessible for all.

You can see our progress on our accessibility statement page.