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We relaunched suffolk.gov.uk on Thursday 15 December 2022.
This is our main website, used by over 100,000 people a month to access local government information and services online.
We've rebuilt the site to fix a number of problems and improve the experience for users.
Our new website is:
You can read more about the improvements we’ve made below.
Site speed is important. People get frustrated when they have to wait for webpages to load.
Our old site was very slow. But you should find the new suffolk.gov.uk loads much quicker. This is due to both the new technology we're using, and the changes we've made to our content.
About 1 in 5 people in the UK have a disability. This could include sight, hearing, cognitive, mobility or sensory access needs. Inaccessible websites exclude people from local digital services and aren't compliant with legislation.
Regulations state public sector websites and mobile apps must meet specific accessibility standards. We've designed our new site to comply with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
We’ve rebuilt suffolk.gov.uk from the ground up so it's far more inclusive for people with access needs. In particular, the site works better with assistive technology such as screen readers used by blind people.
We’ve also added an accessibility toolbar called Recite Me. You can open it by clicking the “Accessibility tools” link or icon at the top of the page.
You can visit our accessibility page to find out more about what you can do with the toolbar, including:
We’ve made it easier to find what you need, no matter where you are on our website.
You’ll see that whatever device you use the header stays at the top of the page, and follows you as you scroll. That means wherever you are in the page, you can search or navigate to find what you’re looking for.
Our new site search will start suggesting pages as you type. You can then click or tap through to the page, without having to visit a search results page as an extra step.
Our navigation menu – the square black button in the top-right of the header – presents you with two different ways of finding what you need:
Our website doesn’t process sensitive data, but the old version of the site was outdated and vulnerable to risks such as web form spam attacks.
We've rebuilt the new suffolk.gov.uk on a more modern, secure platform, which we’ll be able to keep up to date.
Our new platform will be more resilient to sudden increases in usage. This means that there’s less chance of the site becoming unavailable when you need it.
We know people visit government websites to access services, not for fun. Our users want to find an answer or complete a task, then get on with their day. But we also know that design can play a role with how people feel about the experience of doing these things.
For our new website we've introduced:
When we tested this approach, people told us the site looked more “modern” and “clean”. They said it felt more “reassuring”, “trustworthy” and “human”.
Looked modern, easy to navigate, great use of pictures. I liked that the search bar follows the page as well as the top things searched for being at the top. Simple, clean, easy to read.
Icons and images can also help people with access needs. Many of our users have cognitive or learning disabilities, or they might not speak English as a first language. Visual imagery can help them work out what to click on. We've used Font Awesome icons to act as cues for different topics and tasks.
The way people use the internet continues to evolve. About half of our users now access suffolk.gov.uk on smartphones and tablets. In future, perhaps we'll see a growing number of people using smart devices, digital assistants, virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) to access local government services.
In response to this we've:
Our website relaunch project wasn't ever just about launching a new version of suffolk.gov.uk. It was also about investing in a new digital content platform, where we could develop and manage multiple Suffolk County Council websites or apps. The platform we've committed to is called Contensis.
Throughout 2022 our project team worked alongside Zengenti, the company behind Contensis, to design the new Suffolk County Council website.
We also redesigned the site working with users:
It’s important that our website is inclusive, and meets everyone's needs. To understand our users and their needs, we carried out user research and analysed data, including:
The best research you can do is testing designs with real users. In particular, we wanted to test with local residents and people with access needs. During our research and testing we met with members of organisations including:
We also recruited local residents to user research sessions through social media (our Facebook and Twitter).
We carried out user research both virtually (using Microsoft Teams) and in person. We worked with people in small groups and on an individual basis, visiting them at home to observe them testing the new suffolk.gov.uk designs.
While most of our website visitors are members of the public, people who work for Suffolk County Council are also users of the site. So we carried out several weeks of in-house design demos and feedback sessions.
We received feedback from councillors, colleagues and our Staff disABILITY Network. We were encouraged by how positive the feedback was, while also noting critical comments we could use to improve.
Months of designing and testing the new suffolk.gov.uk led to many findings and recommendations, which we’ve used to bring about the improvements highlighted above.
Websites are never finished. During this project, there were things we weren’t able to include before we relaunched suffolk.gov.uk. For example, we were planning to rebuild our Nearest School Checker tool as part of our main site, but ran out of time.
New websites are also never perfect. We’re asking for feedback on the new site, and people will surely tell us about issues that we’ve overlooked.
Starting from today, we’ll continually improve the experience of using suffolk.gov.uk, including regular updates to introduce new features and fix issues. We’ll continue to base our changes on data, including research with people in Suffolk.
You can help us improve our website. Tell us what you think, including any suggestions or problems you find.
Your comments could end up improving the experience of everyone who uses suffolk.gov.uk.