Getting eyeballs on corporate content
Back in February we launched the new vic.gov.au (you can read more here), transitioning it from a portal that showed citizens how government worked to a place where content was designed for citizens.
What happened when we merged the DPC corporate website into vic.gov.au?
Departments have traditionally had their own corporate websites. The Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) was no different.
The DPC website contained a mix of information, including:
- Corporate information — annual plans, organisational structures
- Information for prospective employees
- Information for the Victorian Public Service
- DPC-led initiatives
This mix produced a website that lacked cohesion and had pretty mediocre feedback and visits.
What did we do?
- We had an in-depth look at what content was getting used.
- If content wasn’t getting used, we asked — do we need it?
- If we didn’t need content, it was archived.
- Then we found owners for all the content we wanted to keep and trained them in how to write for the web.
- As part of that process, we applied content standards to make sure every page has a clear purpose and content is written in plain English.
What happened next?
We migrated the content to vic.gov.au and shut down the corporate site.
Guess what? The use of DPC content went up. Surprise!
There was an 85% increase in people accessing content that was previously on the standalone site in the first month.
This increase tells us a few things:
- Good content will be accessed regardless of which site it sits on.
- Having a standalone site wasn’t required for content discovery or use.
- Applying content standards improves the content experience.
- Users care about the content, not the department that developed it. There was a 53% increase in traffic to the DPC home page in the first month it was incorporated into vic.gov.au.
- Being on vic.gov.au improves SEO.
Some other benefits include:
- Digital content expertise improved the content.
- The digital skills of DPC staff were improved.
- We reduced costs because we’re running fewer websites.
We’ve received feedback that users would like to see all the department corporate content in vic.gov.au.
As we work in building out vic.gov.au, we will be looking at what other content can find a home here.
