When we created our current website we took the content from the previous one and adapted it to fit the new look and feel. Sometimes we split content out, other times we combined it to have everything about a particular service in one place. We felt, at the time, that it would be better if people could find everything they needed to know about Blue Badges on a single page.

Our disabled parking information is really important to a lot of people and we wanted to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

People having their say

On every page of our site there is a feedback form to give people the chance to tell us what they think about our information, to point out things that may not be very clear and to tell us if something isn’t working properly. We got regular feedback about our Blue Badge page, some of it saying that people found it easy to follow, some of it saying that it was hard to pick out the specific things that people were looking for. So, we decided to look at our information to see if we could improve it.

Finding the problem

The first thing to do was to look at where things might be a bit confusing. Using a Word document we split out all the sections in the page to see if they would make more sense on their own. With several different transactions and processes linked to Blue Badges, this seemed the best thing to start with. We could see straight away that there was possible confusion around the different reasons people may be able to get a Blue Badge for, and the relatively new criteria of hidden disabilities was adding to that. Splitting that out and giving it its own content area helped make that and a lot of other things clearer. We’d made a good start.

Next we looked at each section of content and worked through it to make sure that any processes involved were clearly explained step-by-step. How could we expect people to understand information and get what they wanted out of it if it jumped around all over the place? We also used this process to cut out any repetition and unnecessary wordiness. This all took a while, but it was time well-spent because we were heading in the right direction. And when it was ordered correctly and not repetitive it was much easier to follow.

Solving the problem

Now we had a series of prepared pages instead of one single massive page. Each page only contained information that was relevant to the subject and we signposted to other pages as we needed to. We were ready to build it all back into the website. While most people will search to find information, we still have to bear in mind that information should sit in a logical place in the website structure. We asked one of our developers to create a new Blue Badge website section, sitting under ‘Roads and Transport’ as a home for all the pages.

The service matters

There was one more, really important step to take before we could build the new section of pages. We had told the service what we were planning to do early on. Now we worked closely with them to make sure they understood what we were trying to do and to get their approval for the new information and the way it was going to be laid-out. They made several suggestions, all of which were really useful in helping us finalise the content.

With everything lined up, re-ordered and planned we got on and built and populated the new pages. Having done the bulk of the work away from the website, this was a relatively easy job and it was only a couple of days before we could switch over from the one massive page to the new set of nine pages.

Customer focus

Since this work was done, we have not received any negative feedback about our Blue Badge information.

Our whole purpose is to make information available to people in a way that they can use it best. We have gone a long way to making that happen with our disabled parking information. Now to apply this thinking to other big areas of the site.