Electoral Commission
An intuitive and accessible publication management system for one of the UK's most important regulatory organisations.
The Electoral Commission is a respected regulatory organisation responsible for maintaining the integrity of electoral processes. Facing challenges with their existing digital platform, they enlisted the assistance of Numiko for a complete overhaul of their web presence. The key impetus for this revamp was to enhance the management and publication of guidance-based content, making it more accessible and aligned with accessibility standards.
Challenge
The requirement for a new website stemmed from the pressing need to address the complexities and inefficiencies surrounding the management and publication of content. The Commission’s guidance was locked in thousands of PDF, Word and Excel documents. Their maintenance was extremely inefficient, particularly as specific information was often replicated across hundreds of documents. Because of the file formats used, making one small change could take many hours of effort, the content was not findable once published, and it did not conform to accessibility standards.
Approach
Our approach included the introduction of a system for reusing identical sections of guidance across multiple documents. This method meant that a single change would cascade across all instances where the 'guidelet' was used, reducing administrative workload substantially. We also provided functionality for creating customised instances of the guidance content where variations were required.
A flexible, configurable workflow was integrated to accommodate the commission's extensive review process, ensuring the accuracy, clarity, and conciseness of the guidance is maintained. We also designed a solution to temporarily accommodate a mix of web-based and document-based content during the transition from PDF, Word and Excel files.
A significant component of the project was user research. We used online surveys, card-sorting exercises, and user testing to shape the new information architecture and to determine the positioning of voter information. Extensive accessibility testing ensured the new website is compliant with WCAG 'AA' standards.
We worked closely with the Electoral Commission to create a platform that not only enhances the user experience but also facilitates better content management and collaboration for the commission's internal teams, improving operational efficiencies as part of the broader digital transformation.
Results
The redesign of the website led to significant improvements in user engagement and operational efficiency. Key performance metrics demonstrated impressive results:
- Pages per session increased by 46% demonstrating substantially increased user engagement.
- The bounce rate decreased by 34% demonstrating that users were finding content of relevance to them on the new website.
- Page views increased by 101% demonstrating a very significant increase in the number of users accessing the website.