The Client
Buckinghamshire Council was looking to prevent the loss of data and rebrand their previous website.
The website aimed to support Buckinghamshire residents in safely transporting children to school, offer invaluable information about the local area, and provide resources for professional teachers to use in their everyday practice.
This project was a high priority as the council had four weeks to transfer the entire library of data from the previous supplier. Furthermore, the council was restructuring with another council in Buckinghamshire to create a unitary authority and needed a website that reflected its diverse group of users. To help them, we built a new website called ‘School Travel Planning’ using their previous domain name.
Project Brief
The goal of this project was to protect a large volume of data, review the current website, and make design changes within a deadline of three weeks. Data included copy content, image assets, PDF file and other content files.
While doing so, we collaborated with the council to identify strategies to improve the experience of users on their website. During our exploration of the previous website, we identified the following issues:
- A time-consuming task of downloading resource materials.
- It was built only for desktop view and was unresponsive.
- The main navigation required a structure to present the hierarchy.
- Presented an inefficient method of contacting the council.
Our Solution
The high-priority task, of protecting the large volume of data, was addressed with specialist software. This provided version history of the original content, which we later secured across two servers via our hosting services.
For the rebranding, we reflected on the issues highlighted by the council to make the following changes:
- Convert relevant resource materials from PDF and content files to website pages for easy readability.
- Build a responsive website that allows a wide range of devices to access content, making the website mobile-friendly.
- Organise the main navigation using categories and sub-menu items, to allow users to easily locate information based on their visit.
- Enable users to contact the council through in-page forms.
Alongside, offering solutions to the issues with the previous site, it was essential to maintain the Buckinghamshire Council branding, so users recognised the website and felt a sense of confidence when navigating through the pages. To ensure a diverse range of user needs were met, our redesign was complied with the latest Web Accessibility requirements.
The Results
Buckinghamshire Council was impressed that framework digital was able to deliver the project within the limited timeframe; alongside making it current, consistent with the branding and familiar to users. While residents used it for school transportation, professional teachers were able to easily access lesson resources on road safety. The website’s modern design “established a good standard for publishing content for teachers and branding” (Buckinghamshire Council, 2021).
You can visit School Travel Planning by clicking the link below.
https://schooltravelplanning.com/
