How To Awaken Your Web Design

There has been an awakening... have you felt it? — Supreme Leader Snoke, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

More and more, government agencies are starting to see the value in customer experience, usability and content strategy. But so often, the dark side creeps in... focusing on aspects of the site that don't actually enhance usefulness for citizens.

When it comes to government web projects, product owners often want to show progress. Understandably, they like to be able to point to something visual to prove that a change has been made, somehow correlating that change must equal value. Whether it's a new color palette, new images on the homepage (through which users rarely enter the website), or new content pages (often duplicating content that already exists elsewhere), the temptation to make highly visible changes a priority is always there.

Visually cool design? What about useful design?

But the truth is, you probably already have a lot of valuable answers to questions that people are asking. However, the value of that content is dormant because the focus on visual design has taken priority over invisible design. Well-structured, useful, findable content that caters to organic search-referred users actually serves citizens a lot better than pretty design.

The problem is, a lot of those changes happen behind the scenes, so as a government manager in charge of a web presence, you've got to arm yourself with knowledge to argue for that critical user research and content design that moves websites, tools and apps from containing latent value to delivering actual value.

I recently wrote more in depth about this topic on ICF's blog, The Spark. Read Six Ways to Awaken the Dormant Value in Your Agency's Web Content.