A Content and User Experience Strategy for local government

In local government, content strategy and user experience are usually closely linked. Also, many councils do not have enough staff to have separate specialists for each area. Because of this, I am expanding my original content strategy to also cover user experience guidance.

The purpose of our Content and UX Strategy is to give us a shared structure. This structure gives us a common understanding, based on agreed rules, that guides us to create consistent online experiences.

These experiences should let users easily do the tasks they came to our digital services to do, whether that is finding information or filling in a form. Users should feel more positive about the organization when they finish their task than when they started it.

Having clear, published guidance about how we create content and features, and how we display them on our sites, gives us something else too. When a service area disagrees with us, and wants to do things differently from our usual practice, we can point to this guidance. It explains why we cannot do what they want, in the way they want it.

This document will explain some of the detail of how we might do this. But in the end, we need to ask ourselves these questions when we create any piece of content:

• Who is this content for?
• What does the user want from this piece of content?
• Is the user's need for this content a positive or neutral need (for example, finding out school term dates, booking for an event, or finding out about our leisure facilities), or a negative need (for example, paying a fine or a bill, or reporting flytipping or a missed bin collection)?
• If the need is positive or neutral, how can we make sure it is a positive experience, by making it a good one?
• If the need is negative, how can we turn the user's negative feeling about the organization, at the start of the interaction, into a neutral or positive view by the end?
• Has this piece of content met the user's need?
• If yes, can we ask "Is there anything else I can help you with now?"
• If no, how can we point the user in the right direction?

Answering Those Questions

We will look at these questions one at a time and work out how to answer them.

Who is this content for?

We create content either for a general audience or for a specific audience. Content for a specific audience may need different writing and structure from content for a general audience. Anybody might want to raise a concern or make a complaint about a taxi driver. But mostly, only taxi drivers and possible future taxi drivers are likely to be interested in content about taxi licensing.

What does the user want from this content?

We normally write user needs in this format: "As a [type of person], I need to [do something / learn something], so that I can [do something]."

• As a resident, I need to get rid of an old sofa, so that I have room for the new one I have ordered.
• As a parent, I need to check the next school term or holiday dates, so that I can buy new uniform or plan activities.
• As a driver, I need to pay my Clean Air Zone charge, so that I do not get a penalty charge.

We create content to meet the matching user need. Because of this, we must make sure we meet the main need right away. If there are necessary warnings about the key information, they should come straight after the key facts, before any facts about secondary needs or full details.

Is the user's need a positive or neutral one, or a negative one?

Our digital services are not only tools that let people ask for or report something. They are also a showcase for the organization. They need to show the organization in the best possible light.

A good real-world service should be matched by a good online service. If the user's need is a positive or neutral one, it will not help us if the user's experience of the matching digital service is a dull one.

But it would not be sensible to try to make a negative user need feel fun. If somebody feels annoyed while reporting that their bins have not been emptied, then a picture on the page of a group of laughing bin collectors will not make them feel less annoyed about the interaction. It will make them feel more annoyed.

Nobody will ever feel delighted after they have paid their Clean Air Zone charge. Trying to make a negative digital experience feel fun would not work. But we can still try to lower the negative feelings the user has towards us at that point. We can do this by creating a good, efficient, professional experience. This experience should accept our responsibility for any failure in our service. It should also avoid criticizing the user, even if the reason they are contacting us is something they have done wrong themselves.

Have we met the user's need?

Imagine a user has typed "school term dates" into a search engine, and the top search result has taken them straight to our school term dates page. It would be easy to assume they have found exactly what they were looking for. But were they looking for the coming school term dates, or the dates from the past?

In a city of a million people, some people will want to check last September's to December's term dates, even in April. But we do not need to carry out a large piece of user research to know that most people looking for school term dates want the future dates. So the future dates should be the first thing they see. We must flag any piece of content that has a future date for review on that date, so that we can update it to stay relevant.

Why were they looking for the school term dates in the first place? Is there anything else we can help them with? At this point, can we give links to interesting holiday activities for children, in related content? If we are near the end of the school holidays, it might help to also point the user to things like school uniform grants.

Maybe the user typed something else that led them to the school term dates page. Were they actually looking for information about school admissions? Or were they trying to find their nearest primary school for their three-year-old child?

By being clear about the user's need for the content, and by understanding how that content fits into the wider service instead of treating it alone, we can help our users further. We can guess where they might have gone wrong in reaching this page, and help them find the right spot. Or we can guess what they might really want the information for, and meet that real underlying need, rather than just the immediate one.