Harborough District Council has adopted an innovative new approach to
web design known as 'Responsive Web Design', to develop a web site that
delivers a user experience that is 'unique' within the local government
community.
This approach enables a website design to be responsive to a
user's behaviour, environment and how they choose to browse according
to screen size and platform, whether this be by tablet, mobile device
or desktop computer.
Harborough District Council has now made significant steps forward to
ensuring a consistent customer experience across all access channels and
devices.
The Council can also deliver improved efficiencies as content
will only need to updated once to achieve this.
The Harborough site is
also now 'future proofed' for yet to be released devices, because of the
ability to deliver an optimised user experience utilising existing
content.
Creating an agile and responsive organisation is the challenge faced by
every Council across the UK where 'transformation' is the key to
improved efficiency and cost savings.
The Responsive Web Design approach
provides a key enabler of transformation and the delivery of Harborough
District Council's vision - which is to deliver 'The Council of the
Future' as recently defined by Socitm.
"A council that is agile and responsive; able to change to meet changing needs, able to deliver services efficiently and well, and taking account of people with disabilities, or people in more remote areas with travel difficulties. They will see a council that engages with them and involves them - and most importantly they will see it as "my council" rather than just "the council"
Socitm Consulting, 2011
To provide a robust platform for transforming the 'customer experience',
Harborough District Council has worked with the Jadu design team to
deliver a full redesign using the responsive web design approach and
upgraded its content management system to Jadu CMS 1.9 on a php
platform.
The new design is reactive and reflects the rural and demographic
district of Harborough. As part of this theme the Council has also
introduced a 'day and night' theme to the web site to reflect the rural
environment.
It has also introduced a weather icon that changes
according the current weather conditions.
The new design has been focused around the 'Community' rather than the
Council's brand to ensure that residents maintained a sense of
community.
This is particularly important given the rural nature of the
Harborough district. The web design is also deliberately uncluttered to
avoid the issues of broadband connectivity typically associated with the
rural environment.
"We did not want to be like everyone else. We wanted to provide a more engaging design for residents that reflected the rural environment. Ultimately our goal is to deliver what is right for the customer and be individual, unique, refreshing and ahead of the game."
Councillor Paul Dann, Portfolio Holder for Corporate and Customer Services
Harborough has also improved the transactional capabilities of the new
site by focusing on the 'Top Tasks' that residents seek when visiting
the Council's web site, these are:
- Council News
- Planning on line
- Conservation Areas
- Council Tax
- Contact Us
- Shopping Guide
- Council Jobs
- Refuse Collection
- Wind Farms
- Visit Harborough
This approach was recently identified by Socitm as essential to
developing effective web sites and is a key aspect of channel shift.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing with other Jadu customers has made a
significant contribution to the Harborough web development. In
particular, close collaboration with neighbouring council Hinckley &
Bosworth has enabled Harborough to maximise its web resource
effectiveness.
The next phase of development for Harborough is to further develop the
concept of 'My Harborough' which has been a key driver for all
initiatives to date. This will focus on the use of postcodes to pull
data from all areas of the web site enabling increased focus on 'Calls
to action' in areas such as My Nearest and other top tasks.
The council
will also be upgrading its intranet and increasing the level of
integration between front end web systems and back office systems such
as HR and payroll to promote self help across the council.
