An end of year round up

With Christmas and 2016 just around the corner (it is Christmas Eve Eve, after all) we thought it would be a good time to take a look over some of the work we have done over the past year, as well as look ahead to some of the work we will do in the first part of 2016.

A look back at 2015

2015 has seen us carry out a lot of preparation for our new website across the content, design and technical work streams. All of this work should put us in a good place to really get going with the re-development in the new year.

Content

In 2015 we did the following content work for the re-development:

• held 30 workshops, across the five directorates, each one producing a discovery report and key user journey
• re-wrote 11 sections of content, including bins and recycling, school admissions, and elections
• launched 10 Treejack surveys
• drafted our updated content standards

Design

In 2015 we did the following design work for the re-development:

• drafted 8 sections worth of wireframes
• completed the procurement of web design services

Technical

In 2015 we did the following technical work for the re-development:

• set up the Drupal hosting infrastructure
• migrated 9 of 11 microsites across to new web hosting

Looking forward to 2016

2016 is shaping up to be another busy year for us. We will be continuing the workshops, and have about another 30 to run. We will also continue to re-draft content, working to make it as clear to the customer as possible with guided user journeys.

Excitingly, we will also be commencing work on the design, as well as launching our newsroom site in beta.

In terms of the main public website, we hope to launch our council tax beta early in February, when we will also commence user testing of this section to get feedback as to how it is working for our customers.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who has helped us with user testing so far through our navigation surveys. If you’d like to be informed when we start user testing for our beta site, sign up now!

Have a very happy Christmas  from all the team and we’ll be back next year!