July 22, 2018
Advanced user experience: Safe Food Queensland case study
In this article:
Government websites are a different breed to the commercially oriented content marketing and eCommerce websites we usually work on.Conversion isn’t the order of the day, and instead of a targeted client base, government websites tend to require managing a stable of different stakeholders.Working on a government website involves crafting a user interface that will effectively serve anyone from industry, consumers, other government agencies, academics, researchers, schools, media and interest groups.This makes government websites interesting and a nice challenge.In this case study, we will take a look at how we balanced the demands of these stakeholders to create an effective user interface for Safe Food Queensland, and explain how this can be applied to your own projects.The client

The problem
Safe Food had a problem with digital:
The situation
- Unclear definition of the organisation's main purpose.
- Lacked a dynamic communication platform - unable to easily make simple changes.
- Desktop-only website, with a customer base that was becoming increasingly mobile-focused.
- A poorly structured website - difficult to find common information.
The challenge
Safe Food needed a website to provide information, and it didn't do this well.The primary use case for all stakeholders was to check information such as legislation requirements, product recalls, accreditations or to pay a bill.The secondary use case was for industry to apply for accreditation.The new website project featured the following challenges:- Balancing the information requirements and customer journeys from half a dozen different stakeholder groups.
- Design a website that looks credible but avoids the vanilla website structures that are common on heavy content-based websites.
The insight
Strategy 1 – Mapping the stakeholders (simplified example)We focused our efforts on reviewing the stakeholders and their interactions with Safe Food. The simplest means of doing this is mapping:- What did they need to see?
- What did they need to do?
Industry | Compliance requirements. Gaining accreditation. |
Consumers | Product recall information. Reporting a food incident. |
Other government agencies | Detail on compliance information. What does Safe Food do? |
Academics, researchers, schools | Annual reports. Legislation and regulatory information. |
Media | Press releases. Recall information. |
Interest Groups | Key contacts. |
- Navigation links are placed all over the page
- Information to stakeholders is not segmented
- Quick links consist of a bucket of common activities (a "catch-all" solution that is not effective)
- The interface doesn't follow how people navigate, resulting in users scanning multiple times back-and-forth to find what they need.
- Group information that is applicable to the same stakeholder group
- Extract out information and actions that have a higher rate of engagement
- Use visuals to emphasise things that are important
- Use navigation structures like mega menus to organise and hide secondary level information
- How often are these activities done?
- How big or important is this stakeholder group?
- What is the familiarity of the companies with Safe Food?
Stakeholder | Frequency / Importance | Notes |
Industry | Very common. | Required to be certified and understand the requirements. |
Consumers | Medium. | Low understanding of Safe food. |
Other government agencies | Moderate-Low. | High understanding of Safe Food. |
Academics, researchers, schools | Low. | Low understanding, but will search. |
Media | Low. | Relatively simple needs. Knows to look for 'News' or 'Newsroom' |
Interest Groups | Low. | Self-interested. Can find their own way. |
The findings
Ultimately, we found that the website needed to be primarily oriented towards industry stakeholders who were reliant on Safe Food for certification. The secondary focus would be consumers. While consumers usage of the website was moderate, the information they were looking for was very focused and highly important - specifically in relation to product recalls.The solution
We starting building the website in WordPress using our modular content management system.Our solution had a number of elements:- Simplified information dashboard - Action dashboard
- Navigation system segmentation and simplification
- Visualised explanation of Safe Food purpose
- Module system

- Food safety advice
- Food businesses


- Greater reconfigurability
- Simple granular extension
- Increased website life-span
- Unlimited page configuration (dependent on modules available)
The results

- The website now presents Safe Food as a sophisticated government agency
- Information is easily accessible on a range of consumer, and industry topics
- The website now portrays a clear sense of who Safe Food is and what they do
Lessons Learned
#1 - Creating a benchmarkThis project was super smooth sailing. In retrospect, however, (in writing this case study) it was unfortunate that Safe Food did not have Google Analytics installed. This prevented a clear metric to benchmark performance against, it could have helped to identify any content that users were flocking, and the organisation was not aware of.While this is increasingly rare, if there is no analytics, it is definitely worth installing on an old website as this provides a way to benchmark the site. Nearing completion of the new site analytics from the old site could be audited for any surprises and to establish a baseline and an argument for improvement.#2 - Producing contentThere was a lot of content that was needed for this site. And this is commonly an area that is overlooked. In government, the content, (especially if it is informed by legislation) needs to be correct and can't just be done by any old copywriter.For this project having subject experts write the content was a key area that kept the project on ice for a little while.Let us know your thoughts! If you would like to talk to us about this article, drop us a line on [email protected].
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