Creating a new website for you!

We’re excited now the new GovCMS website is live on Drupal8.

This is the story of our journey in the words of Emily Castrission, project lead.

‘The GovCMS website redevelopment approach was to use the Agile methodology as recommended best practice by Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).

‘Our website redevelopment starts and ends with our customers. They told us our website needed changing to meet their needs. This was mainly due to a growth in business and rapidly transforming design trends.

‘We've built our business around the GovCMS Community, so we asked them what they wanted during the first phase of our project, known as the Discovery phase. We also looked at industry trends, accessibility requirements and the DTA Digital Guides as a starting point.

‘GovCMS founder, Sharyn Clarkson and Service Manager, Nathan Wall had a lot of input during the Discovery phase. They emphasised that the GovCMS Community sets us apart from any other service of its kind in the market. Therefore, our new website needed to reflect this and embody our community. It required a friendly, motivated and innovative look and feel.

‘Delivering a website that is a knowledge base for a wide spectrum of customers has its challenges. We have potential customers with little technical expertise through to technical experts who manage many GovCMS websites. We spoke to customers in all of these groups and found one resounding commonality - everyone wanted information that's easy to understand. This was a simple task for high level information, however, when we got down to technical instructions such as, “how to activate a website shield” writing simple English was more challenging.

‘Our more experienced customers wanted step-by-step instructions on how to carry out activities rather than having to call us. Of course, we’re here if needed but publishing all the information customers require in the one place is less resource intensive and the preferred model for everyone.

‘We divided the website into two sections. The first half is high level, introductory information. The second half is a service centre providing self-help. The first half of the website was smooth sailing. The second half required an overhaul of our business processes.

‘If we are offering self-service, we needed a user focused website. Our customers needed to be able to navigate and find information easily. I put together wireframes for the website and tested them with customers. I refined the designs based on customer feedback. Then I tested them again to make sure they were right. Next, on to the content.

‘I ran sprints involving team members with technical expertise and those who could translate their technical speak into self-service guides that we would all understand! Despite being technical information, I kept the language simple and accessible.

‘When it came to building the website, we went to the Drupal Services Panel through an RFQ. We also took the opportunity to use the GovCMS UI Starter Kit.

‘Can you guess what came next? Yes, more user testing! We had come a long way since the beginning of this journey. Our customers were happy. We were happy. It was time to go live. And here we are….

‘We achieved more than we planned at the start. We’ve overhauled our business processes to incorporate self-service. We’ve received Accessibility Certification for our content. And best of all, we’ve created a website that reflects the personality of GovCMS and our community.

‘For the finishing touch, we captured the GovCMS story in a short video with Sharyn Clarkson. Make sure you check it out on the new homepage.

‘On behalf of the GovCMS team, thank you to our customers for continuously helping to improve our service. We hope you enjoy our new website.’