KIMBO Design worked closely with the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) to complete a thorough audit of the Regional District’s previous website and web application. This included providing informed recommendations for a website redesign that provided optimal content organization, integration with existing applications, and backend manageability. After a thorough audit of the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s (SCRD) previous website and web application, KIMBO Design was awarded the website redesign project.
What We Delivered:
- Complete Website Audit & Report
- Website Design & Development
- Information Architecture Development
- Custom WordPress CMS
- Stakeholders Engagement with Leadership & Staff
- Custom Graphics and Branding
- SEO Strategy and Implementation
- Hosting & Support Services
The Challenge
The SCRD’s previous website was initially implemented back in 2007, with content being managed by individual departmental content editors and the website running on an old proprietary third-party CMS that was not user-friendly. There were multiple instances of duplicated content and linked files that were outdated on the website.
The lack of a robust process and content organization meant that some of the chaos from the backend was also transferred to the front end, such as menu structures that were deep and difficult to navigate, resulting in a difficulty in content discoverability. Additionally all of the existing district website functionalities also needed to be seamlessly integrated into the redesign to ensure the retention of taskflows familiar to existing users which further added to the complexity of the project.
The Strategy
To achieve the project goals, the KIMBO team did not only evaluate the SCRD’s current resources but also facilitated an in-person workshop with SCRD stakeholders. The purpose of this activity is to gather the input of stakeholders in an engaging environment. Opinions, thoughts, and comments of stakeholders gathered in this stage served a large role in our development of a suitable strategy for the Regional District. Activities carried out in the workshop include SWOT analyses, surveys, and group discussions, among others.
The stakeholders workshop was a great success. The high turnout rate for the in-person workshop session suggests that the participants we collected information from were a representative sample group. A thorough audit report containing all the aforementioned information, including KIMBO’s professional recommendations for a website redesign was produced using the audit and workshop results.
Stakeholders engagement with the 5 Directors of Sunshine Coast Regional District
Stakeholders engagement with 27 Sunshine Coast Regional District Staff
In order to improve user engagement and participation in the work of the SCRD, we recognized that the website must provide visitors with a consistent, comprehensive, and user-friendly online experience. Thus, an obstacle to the project was to find a suitable way to present the existing content in an informative, relevant, easy-to-find, quick-to-load, and visually appealing manner.
Sunshine Coast Regional District website redesign before and after redesign view
Sunshine Coast Regional District website redesign page layout screens
A robust document management system was developed specifically for the district website. This allowed the district staff to upload and maintain a large volume of documents with ease with search and filter functionality built in. An agendas and board minutes function was also built-in for the district to manage The Board of Directors meeting minutes and agendas.
Sunshine Coast Regional District Document Library, Board Minutes and Agendas Features
The visual layout of the content needed to be presented in a way that is informative, relevant, easy to find, quick to load, visually appealing, and viewable on any type of computer, tablet, or mobile device with social media integration.
Results
Our team followed KIMBO’s success-proven audit process for the evaluation of existing SCRD web resources. This included qualitative and quantitative analyses, such as web content look and feel and web analytics, respectively.
KIMBO Design then successfully redesigned the district website, taking into account their branding, audit data, user feedback, and stakeholder input. Through careful consideration of these factors, KIMBO Design created an engaging user experience that was not only easy for existing users to follow but also seamlessly integrated new users into the platform. The redesigned website achieved improved content organization, user-friendliness, and visual appeal, enhancing community engagement and accessibility across devices while seamlessly integrating all existing district website functionalities.
