From Calibrate, we think the user experience is incredibly important. The citizen must find information in a fast and intuitive way. The service should be tailored to the citizen. This is why a preliminary study with various core tasks is extremely important in order to examine, together with the municipality of Schilde, which information architecture should be used to build the web platform.
User-friendly website for the municipality of Schilde
Municipality of Schilde was looking for a digital partner to develop their municipal website Schilde.be, Intranet and website for the community center Werf 44 strategically address and build.
During the realization of the website of Schilde.be importance was attached to the user experience for the citizen. It is important that the visitor can discover the services of the municipality of Schilde as transparently and easily as possible.
After the construction of Schilde's municipal website, the community center's website was Werf 44 built. Through this website, the community aims to highlight the offerings of Werf 44 through news items and events. In addition, the community center's room offerings are the focus.
During the realization of this web platform for Schilde.be and Werf 44, we focused on maximum reusability of components. So that, during the realization of Werf 44, page components of Schilde.be could be reused as much as possible.
The citizen is central
Strategic Research
Through the data analysis, the visitor statistics of the previous website were scrutinized.
Several key questions are asked and answered, such as: Through which sources (e.g., social media) does a visitor arrive at the website? What search terms is a visitor most looking for?
This information is important and interesting for building the information and navigation architecture and building the homepage in such a way that the user experience is right from the start.
Through a constructive workshop together with the communication team of the municipality of Schilde, and in combination with the data analysis, we learned about the different priorities:
- It is important to inform both non-residents and residents. The content is central to this and must be retrievable in a user-friendly manner.
- There are 2 types of visitors: First of all there are visitors who are looking for administrative information (e.g. what are the opening hours of the container park?). In addition, there are visitors who are looking for what to experience in the municipality of Schilde.
- "Beleef Schilde" is one of the priorities to highlight all tourist activities or activities of the municipality and Werf 44.
It was a fun experience to build a new web platform together with the enthusiastic communication team of the municipality of Schilde. The user experience, user friendliness of the Drupal CMS and reusability were central to this.
Drafting of structure & design
Based on the strategic research, the information and navigation structure was built in which all types of content, pages and structures were schematized in an orderly manner. This structure was then converted into interactive wireframes. This was done together with the communication team of the city of Schilde through interactive workshops.
Based on the corporate identity of the municipality of Schilde, the recipes from the preliminary process were converted into a contemporary, modern and fresh design. The tourist section plays mainly with images and is given a much livelier design.
During the realization of this project, maximum attention was paid to accessibility and conversion in order to make the desired information as easy and quick as possible to find for the citizen.
Did you know?
A strategic research is a useful and important tool to identify the needs of the visitor. Based on this information the structure of the website can be developed.
Herbruikbaarheid van componenten
The municipality's web platform today consists of two websites, on the one hand the website of Schilde.be and on the other hand from the Gemeenschapscentrum Werf 44.
Reusability of functionalities, modules and components is paramount. If a component is developed, one can always opt to reuse it on the other subsites.
A Drupal Multisite platform was chosen for the Web platform of the Municipality of Schilde and Werf 44.
In a technical nutshell, this is one technical codebase, but a separate database for each website. Each website thus has its own unique set of content.
The big advantage for support and management is that, for example, a security update does not have to be done three times, but can be applied at once. Each website can have its own identity and configuration, while the functionality is shared.
Dynamic building of pages
Using the Pargaraphs system, a webmaster or editor can build dynamic pages in a user-friendly way.
All these paragraphs contain a number of fields such as titles, text, image, call to actions, etc.; but also a number of settings for background color, position of the image, alignment of the text, etc. One page can have an infinite number of paragraphs on top of each other, so that text, media and dynamic content can be displayed alternately. In this way, the design of the new website can be adapted per paragraph to create a beautiful, but clear page.
Calibrate invests in innovation on a daily basis. Besides the paragraph functionality, Calibrate is actively building websites using the Layout Builder functionality. Besides pargaraphs, this is another way of working to flexibly build pages. Based on the needs and wishes of the client it is determined which mechanism is most suitable.
Flemish Building Blocks
The web platform was linked to the building blocks of the Flemish Government.
First of all, a link was implemented with the My Citizen Profile. My Citizen Profile is the gateway to all official data and documents of a resident with the Flemish/Federal Government. The user can log into this portal via various authentication options (itsme®, eID reader, SMS, etc.).
Gebruiksvriendelijk toegangsbeheer
Schilde.be was equipped with the ACM/IDM functionality of Digital Flanders.
Thanks to ACM/IDM citizens, civil servants and companies get secure and efficient access to the digital applications and information of the Flemish government. ACM can be implemented via the OpenID Connect Protocol.
Did you know?
Calibrate is in close contact with the colleagues of Digital Flanders and helps to build the Flemish Building Blocks. Thanks to the good relationship, we can assist and inform every local government or Flemish Government agency about the application process of the Citizen Profile, ACM/IDM and other building blocks such as Dose, for example.
Through the authentication method ACM there is a possibility to implement a single-sign-on. With ACM, you can choose from different authorization methods. Some examples are itsme®, electronic eID reader, mobile app and SMS.
The Drupal CMS can be configured with a different authentication system. This can enhance the user experience as a login option for both website (administrators), intranet (employees) and for a later e-counter (citizens).
Onze websites Schilde.be en Werf44.be staan ondertussen bijna een jaar live. Calibrate en lokaal bestuur Schilde zijn hierbij twee partners die hetzelfde doel voor ogen hebben: websites die mee zijn en mee blijven. Calibrate is steeds bereid om te luisteren en mee na te denken over een nog optimalere samenwerking, dit door onder andere de wederzijdse verwachtingen op elkaar af te stemmen. Voor ons zijn dat alvast belangrijke elementen voor een lange en leuke samenwerking in alle openheid en transparantie.
Dynamic search function
What are the hours of operation for the container park? How can I renew my driver's license? A user visiting the website of the municipality of Schilde is in some cases very quickly looking for certain information.
The website was equipped with a dynamic Drupal Search API search function where the citizen can quickly find the desired information by means of an autocomplete functionality.
In consultation with the municipality of Schilde it was determined what kind of content should be indexed. All words of these pages are indexed. Based on certain fields (e.g. title and meta tags), certain words can be given an extra "score", making these pages appear higher in the search results.
Interface with Mailchimp
Through the website one can subscribe directly to the Mailchimp newsletter list of the Municipality of Schilde. Mailchimp is by far the most popular email tool. This is mainly due to its user-friendliness. Its simple e-mail editor, flawless integration with CMS systems and autoresponders make it the ideal tool for newsletters and basic autoresponders.