US Local Government Redesign & Development
UX and Design
Increased Engagement
100% Accessibility Compliance
Brief
After our success working with local councils across the UK, Zoocha began our partnership with Coral Gables in Florida in early 2022. Coral Gables had recently been recognised as a Smart City, therefore, the new platform needed to reflect this initiative.
Solution
Zoocha started with a light-touch discovery phase, targeting the key user needs and pain points with the old platform. Users were finding the platform overwhelming, with poor navigation and an information architecture that struggled to prioritise user needs. A key element of the new design focused around improving the information architecture, consolidating an overwhelming three menus on the homepage with 21 individual options, down to two key menus with 9 user-centred options.
Our front end team made use of Storybook to implement a clean front end architecture that allowed for versatile components to be reused and replicated across the entire site, facilitating consistency throughout. To further improve the editor experience, our team ensured that the user permissions matrix would promote a controlled and clear workflow process with access restriction, approval and content history.
Integrating with Granicus, Zoocha were able to implement a flexible events management functionality that allowed events to be displayed clearly through the events page, with users able to filter selectively and view event agendas.
Technical highlights
With an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) team set to review content before publishing to ensure compliance, accessibility was a key focus for Coral Gables. Our front end team therefore worked closely with the Coral Gables team to create an accessible link guidelines document, detailing how each link item on the site would comply with ADA guidelines.
Zoocha launched the Coral Gables platform in May and continue to develop our presence in the USA. Since launch, the new platform has seen page load times decreased by 22%. Engagement across all pages has increased by an average of 6.4% whilst steadily decreasing bounce rate across core pages.
