Website Discovery & Development Project

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council's new LocalGov Drupal website

Redcar & Cleveland Borough council (RCBC) required a modern, WCAG 2.1 AA compliant website that provides easy access to information for the residents, partners and stakeholders, whilst accelerating their start of digital transformation and future development.

Results at a glance

+ 0

End user survey responses

+ 0

Stakeholders engaged

Modern, user-friendly website developed

LocalGov Drupal paves the way for digital transformation

LocalGov Drupal (LGD) is a publishing platform created by councils, for councils. We worked in collaboration with Annertech and the RCBC team to deliver a new and improved website powered by LGD to replace their outdated and inaccessible former website. The redevelopment was based on the feedback and data established during the various phases of the project.

“Working with the teams involved has been incredible. Their passion and buy-in with our vision was what made the whole journey, from procurement to delivery, completely seamless. The transparency and communication back to our team is why we have been able to launch a successful and efficient resident-focused platform.“

Anthony Tyreman

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council

Further results of the project

In just 9 months, we were able to provide a modern and user-first website which reflected the identity of RCBC.
We brought RCBC’s website and content up to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards for accessibility, facilitating WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
The new LGD website is now running at a high performance, loads content faster and – crucially to RCBC’s users – is mobile-responsive.
Our user research and stakeholder engagement centered approach ensured that RCBC’s new website prioritised a functional, flexible and user-friendly experience.
We also provided RCBC’s team with a further 30 days of support for any questions or assistance that was required.

Project at a glance

"A complete re-think, re-design, and re-development of the RCBC website from the ground up."

Challenges to overcome

The original website struggled with some inaccessible content and functionality preventing the site from being as useful to residents as it needed to be.
A large proportion of the negative user experience was due to the structure and information architecture of the site, with many users feeling that they went round in circles.
Search was unable to deliver the relevant results, until appearing in page 20.
There are a high number of stakeholders, which meant that the discovery and strategy phase needed to be extensive to ensure all stakeholder felt they had input on the feedback.
The terminology and language used throughout the website needed modernising to help residents efficiently find relevant information, by using the language of users rather than reflecting internal dialogue.
Certain pages and areas of the site delivered error messages.

The project process

To ensure the website platform met the GDS standards, the project was split into 4 phases: Discovery and strategy, Alpha, Beta and Launch.

Phase 1: Discovery & Strategy

This phase ensures that the RCBC team understands what their needs and priorities are, so that any changes and development is based on qualitative and quantitative data and not assumptions.

The Invuse team reviewed the existing site and completed an in-depth audit and analytical review, as well as a complete LocalGov Drupal GAP Analysis.
The Invuse team ran workshops engaging with 25+ stakeholders to identify their challenges and frustrations.
Over 50+ survey responses from end users provided invaluable help establishing what improvements were required.
This feedback and data were captured and synthesised to develop a list of key requirements and recommendations.
User personas were created, as well as a detailed infrastructure architecture (IA) – a recommended layout and structure – in order to define what success would look like for the following phases.

Phase 2: Alpha

The purpose of this phase is to get a selection of internal stakeholders first look at the new site and conduct user testing. This provides all parties with feedback on key improvements, identified bugs and functionality issues that can be fixed before the website is viewed by external users.

It’s also an opportunity to test for accessibility and best practices across content allowing us to tailor content / design workshops moving into the next phase.

Invuse conducted current content design and delivery evaluations, and provided practical recommendations and in-depth personalised content training to upskill RCBC’s teams and departments thoroughly.
Invuse’s content experts provided RCBC’s teams with accessible content training, guidance and the tools to create consistent, optimised and accessible content that will help RCBC’s residents access the information and documents they need.

Phase 3: Beta

The purpose of the Beta phase was to complete more in-depth user testing with a wider variety of stakeholders and end users. This collates a large amount of feedback on areas that need improvement, and the areas that are ready for the launch.

With over 7,000 pages of content, Invuse’s content specialists held content workshops to help RCBC’s teams create accessible best practice content for the new website.

Invuse carried out in-depth accessibility training, along with content rewriting and restructuring to upskill the wider RCBC team on how to improve on creating documentation that was inclusive to their residents.

An accessibility review was conducted to check the brand new platform was up to WCAG 2.1 AA standards and compliance.

"This was a fantastic project to be involved in, and is a true illustration of the power and importance of prioritising what your users want and need from a website. The new website will act as the cornerstone for digital transformation for RCBC, and I am confident that the site will go from strength to strength as the team start to move on to the next phase of their digital roadmap. I look forward to continuing to work with the team to iterate and involve their digital offering."

Leila Dewhurst

Customer Success Director

The Project Team

All of the teams worked collaboratively to closely identify the challenges throughout the project, to ensure the issues were resolved in partnership. Through the procurement process, we were chosen as the preferred supplier due to our extensive knowledge, our council experience within the team and the understanding of how councils work, their process and hurdles. We purely focus on the design and build based user research and not making assumptions.

About Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council

Redcar & Cleveland is an amazing Borough, with proud people, strong communities, outstanding landscapes and an exciting future. They have high aspirations for thriving communities and a thriving economy. This Council has a crucial role to play to support residents and improve quality of life for local people, especially those in greatest need.

About LocalGov Drupal

LocalGov Drupal (LGD) is a collaboration of councils and suppliers, working together to design and develop an accessible, open source (Drupal) website platform. We work with councils to help them prepare and migrate their website to LGD, connecting their corporate priorities and goals with the voice of their end users.

About Annertech

Founded in 2008, Annertech has grown to become the most innovative open-source digital agency in Ireland. Widely considered to be Drupal experts and serial contributors to the core Drupal platform, Invuse’s partnership with Annertech unites the technical, analytical and experiential attributes to make your new website the best it can be for all your users.