Three Rivers website feedback

8 June 2023

Public launch

We are excited to welcome you to the new threerivers.gov.uk. This new site has been created with the aim of improving your experience, including how we present and organise information to make it more engaging and easier to find.

Please have a look around and complete a short survey to let us know what you think.

What has changed?

In research and discovery sessions with users you told us you wanted the site to keep the feel and authority of a government website, but for the design to better and more user friendly. Our aim has been to deliver this via clear, clean, accessible and impactful design. This allows us to feature information, resources and digital services in the most effective and engaging way.

The site is different in both design and build, and a key aim across both of these has been to keep it simple - both in the user experience and in the way functionality has been created.

Rebuilding this site has been a wide-ranging project, with the work spanning our entire digital estate - and much of the changes have happened behind the scenes, to ensure we are building on a more secure, robust and sustainable foundation.

Why the change?

So what drove this? In short, we had to react to the changes in technology and ensure we had a modern platform. Without intervention the old platform could become  costly and difficult to support.

Given the technical need to upgrade, we were determined to take the opportunity to get the new site right for our users, as well as ensuring the wider platform was more robust, flexible and sustainable. What website users require naturally changes over time, usability standards evolve and the new site needed to reflect this.

Apart from simplicity and accessibility in design, other key principles were reusability and flexibility. We wanted to be able to create more engaging features and content without having to reinvent the wheel.

What did users tell us?

All our key design, usability and content decisions were led by research from our users  groups for whom we provide information or support, such as residents, businesses, and staff. We sought feedback throughout the project via workshops, interviews, user testing sessions and surveys.

We gained many insights from this, which informed our approach from the outset. For instance, you told us that findability was an issue on the old site and that the way content was organised and presented could sometimes be inaccessible or confusing.

Therefore, our priorities included search improvements and a clean, accessible and responsive design that adapts seamlessly to mobile devices. At the same time as the technical development work, content reviews and testing were carried out. This ultimately led to a complete redesign and restructure of the information across the site. Sections, pages, menus and the structure have all been changed to make it easier to understand, navigate and quickly find what you are looking for.

Explore!

Please explore the site - and we’d love to hear your thoughts via our quick survey.

All feedback is really appreciated - it is vital in helping us identify and prioritise potential improvements and future enhancements.

We’re passionate about ensuring this new site works well for residents and all visitors and we expect to continually review and improve features over time and add new functionality in response to changing needs and new challenges.

What’s next?

We are thrilled to be going live with our new site, as it’s an exciting new beginning. The work on this site puts us in a strong position to build on, with more flexibility to handle emerging requirements and changes. Our focus will be on capitalising on the opportunities offered by this and ensuring a process of continuous improvement.

As well as progressing with new digital products and features, we will continue to review analytics data, user testing and improve on the site in priority areas of design, usability, and accessibility of our information and services.