Exploding diagram

Redesigning your website to get visitors to their goal

When Southern Building Control Partnership (SBCP) decided to build a new website, they took advantage of a variety of services offered by Smarter Digital Services. The goal was to make it easier for customers to self-serve.

We started by offering the partnership a range of e-learning courses to hone their writing skills and simplify their content.

SBCP were conscious that they had a lot of information to carry over from the old website. Their burning question was “how to set out the vast amount of content into a coherent navigation structure?”

SDS suggested running a scenario based exercise to capture users’ behaviour.

Scenarios tested ranged from general queries such as:

  • Where would you expect to find information about rules regarding installing a wood burning stove?
  • You want to pay your Building Regulations invoice. Where would you go on our website to do this?

To more complex issues:

  • You made an application to Building Control and the work on your property is now finished but you do not have a Building Control Completion Certificate. You remember the inspector visited and last time he came he was waiting for the electrician to register their work. Now you’re selling your house. Where would you find the information to help you with this problem?
  • You are having new windows installed but the builder is not FENSA registered. Can you find out where on our website you can get information to help you with this problem?

SDS set up a ‘tree’ study to track user’s pathways through the site. this tracked users’ activity when using menus. We were able to show where people went off track and where improvements to the information architecture could be improved.

The study revealed some clear observations. These led to improvements to the menu structure as well as some subtle changes to enhance the customer’s journey.

SBCP immediately made changes and have been monitoring their analytics to make improvements.

SBCP said: ”Ours was a journey from the moment we had the training, it was the talking before we set up the tree study and tweaked the content, it was a complete process rather than just doing the tree study on its own.”

If you would like SDS to analyse your menu structure and offer ideas for improvement, please contact us.