Bringing state agency Inland Fisheries into the modern era
Inland Fisheries’ award-winning website is a masterclass in cutting down on paperwork, boasting no less than 15 user-friendly, accessible forms so users can carry out administrative tasks quickly and easily.
Inland Fisheries is Ireland's dedicated state agency for protecting, managing and conserving Ireland's inland fisheries and sea angling resources.
After a change in digital strategy – from providing information to offering services online – Inland Fisheries was propelled into the modern era with a new award-winning digital home.
Its sleek, Drupal website features a number of new online services designed to cut down on users' paper consumption and carbon footprint, making it easier than ever to do things like purchase licences, pay fines and find the information they’re looking for.
The new Inland Fisheries Ireland website.
Project background
Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) was formed on 1 July 2010 following the amalgamation of the Central Fisheries Board and the seven Regional Fisheries Boards.
This was also when the previous website was launched. Its primary focus then was on providing information to the general public, anglers, commercial fisheries, inter government agencies, jobseekers, researchers, journalists and students (from schools or universities).
The website, which was developed on the Joomla! platform, no longer met the needs of IFI or its target audiences.
The new website needed to switch focus. Although IFI still needed to make a lot of information available to people, it needed to also make it easy for people to access services online.
IFI’s requirements were:
- Brand awareness: Inland Fisheries Ireland needed the website to communicate their mission and values in an impactful and meaningful way.
- UX/design and Accessibility: The website needed to be accessible to all and fully responsive irrespective of device. It needed to be visually attractive and in accordance with brand guidelines.
- User friendly: www.fisheriesireland.ie needed to be redesigned and redeveloped into a website that would be user-friendly – for both content editors and those who used the website.
- Online services: The new website needed to offer online services such as payments and applications.
- Information: The site carried a massive tranche of information. To ensure users would find the information they needed quickly, Annertech needed to develop a new, intuitive site architecture that was cognisant of the requirements of the IFI’s audiences.
- Migration: The existing content needed to be migrated to the new platform.
- Hosting, support and maintenance: The website required a robust, managed hosting service, along with ongoing support and maintenance post-launch.
Challenges
Our goal was to deliver an intuitive site architecture that is cognisant of the requirements of the IFI’s audiences and end-user experience.
Up until now the services that the agency offered were all physical and paper-based. Moving to a paperless, online environment also meant creating online forms that needed to be secure, easy to use and accessible. This turned out to be the biggest challenge of the project.
One of the most important customer journeys was the movement to and through the numerous forms. These forms are also some of the best examples of UX in the project – they make up a major component of the new website.
The forms on the Inland Fisheries website are easy to use. They simplify the process of applying for services, taking the user through the forms step by step.
A lot of research and testing went into the forms, and it was imperative that they were responsive, accessible and user friendly. The required information is presented in smaller, easy-to-navigate pages, and the user can track their progress through the form, moving efficiently through the pages, until they get a personalised message at the end.
Additionally, the site carried a massive tranche of information. Consequently, it had a large number of landing pages, a research portal and various other services, all of which had to be presented in a way that was easy to navigate.
Our approach
Before the development work started, Annertech carried out:
- A content and imagery audit to ensure that IFI’s mission and values were communicated in an impactful and meaningful way
- An analytics and heat map analysis to identify key user journeys and behaviours
- A discovery workshop to identify key objectives and requirements Information architecture workshops with several departments to create a singular architecture
- Wireframes to test the best content and page structures
- Interface design to translate key wireframes into visual designs inline with IFI brand guidelines.
- Design of all components that would be required by content editors to structure content.
- Accessibility testing to ensure that all users have a best-in-class experience
- An analysis and map of the legacy data structures to the new data structures for the migration.
It was clear that the IFI website was going to be used for two main purposes:
- An information hub, where users could sift through the massive library of information available quickly and efficiently.
- Online services – such as applications for permits, or being able to pay for things like penalties or fines, ordering fish from fish farms, or buying licences and permits.
In order to ensure that this information could be made available quickly and effectively and that these services could be accessed easily and efficiently three major developments needed to happen.
1. Information
There was a lot of information stored on the website. In order for users to filter the information quickly and efficiently, its search function needed to be state-of-the-art, returning fast and effective results. Apache Solr was installed as the new search facility, ensuring lightning-fast returns on searches.
2. Online services
Inland Fisheries has, like many state agencies, many administrative functions, including the issuing of permits, licences and fines, certificates of suitability for private water keepers or tender applications.
In order to offer services such as applying for licences, certificates of suitability for private water keepers or tender applications, Annertech needed to create and integrate numerous forms. These forms needed to be accessible and easy to use, as well as secure. Their development involved UX/UI design followed by development and testing across multiple devices/platforms.
These forms, 15 in all, make up a major component of the new website. It took a lot of work, testing and designing to get them to be user-friendly, accessible, and easy to navigate.
3. Online payments
A commerce platform needed to be enabled so that users would be able to pay for services such as purchasing licences, settling fines or penalties and making payments for events such as trade shows. To do this, payment gateway integration (Global Pay) was necessary to ensure that payments could be made in a secure, efficient environment.
Results
The website moved from a text heavy, grey design to one that was very visual. This was challenging, because it had a large number of landing pages, a research portal and various other services.
A component-design approach allowed the individual components on a page to be broken up into building blocks, giving complete flexibility and control to editors over the layout of the page. We identified the specific content/functional requirements for each section of the information architecture and specified how many content types were required.
Measuring the success of a website is important, and we were able to measure the objectives initially set out when the project was launched:
- Migration, support and maintenance: Nearly 1,000 records, including pages of content and PDFs, were migrated to the new platform, saving hours of manual effort. Support and maintenance is ongoing.
- Brand awareness: A major objective for IFI was brand awareness. As a result of the time invested in the content strategy and the new information architecture, the website’s search engine ranking and user-acquisition dramatically improved, with a whopping 17% (50.3% v 32.9%) increase in organic search. Users are also now spending more time on the site, with the average session time having increased by 34%.
- Quick information: The objective was to provide relevant information for the stakeholders with minimum response time. The average page load time of the new site was reduced by 40% (2.14s v 3.57s), giving the user a better experience and also lowering the bounce rate.
- Online services: The number of services available online includes a range of general information and new content is added frequently, as well as the direct provision of services to members of the public. These include:
- Online applications, such as applying for a certificate of suitability for Private Water Keepers or the online tender application form for IFI State Fisheries
- An easy and convenient way to buy licences and permits
- UX/Accessibility: One of the objectives was to ensure that the new website was accessible for all citizens. This website is WCAG compliant and was built using the latest iteration of Drupal, which boasts the latest technology and features, including responsiveness (so device isn’t a barrier). It’s also ATAG compliant and so is accessible for those who work on it. The easy-to-use system is intuitive for content editors, and no HTML or other coding knowledge is required.
Overall, the site’s new, intuitive architecture ensures a vastly improved UX. Importantly, the visually attractive end-user experience is accessible to all and is fully responsive irrespective of device. This is important for all websites, but especially for websites that offer important public services and need to be accessible.
We are thrilled to have helped Inland Fisheries Ireland achieve this goal.
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