SiteControl Case Studies
DWLBC
The Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation's website is based on information themes. Each theme is designed to cover a topic which is identifiable to the department as well as their different audience groups ranging from rural water users to conservationists, students and urban users.
The information covered by this site is quite comprehensive, and a lot of it is cross-referenced and related to other areas of the site.
The history of the website had seen the department grow and publish content on a basic template site, trying to accommodate this growth, until the site was basically out of control, and very difficult to manage.
Navigability and information presentation is key to making the site useable to its diverse audience, and flexibility in the presentation of content, and the customisation for this project has allowed this to work.
An important part of the department's business, and their client's needs, lies in projects, programs and service delivery. As such, we have customised Site Control to allow these important topics to be referenced and made available when you enter each topic area, as direct links. Other general reference information within each topic is also indexed in reference pages such for publications, contact information, legislation, Education and News. This means no matter where you are on the site, you can access the relevant legislation, projects, contacts and education links. It is a co-ordinated and integrated effort to provide quality information to the client.
There is also a current issues feature built into the front page to provide a quick link to some high traffic issues that change from time to time.
Use of iconic images in the site have helped users to keep track of the topic and provide a relief from what would otherwise be a text dominated site. The design is a massive improvement in terms of visual appeal, and also provides visual cues to help the user successfully and intuitively navigate the site.
The site is maintained by large groups of people, with tasks delegated out to four levels of authority across several major departments. This includes manual for administrators and Super Users, who will be responsible for maintaining the site and syncing the test and live sites when necessary. The training and manuals provided have ensured the handover is progressing smoothly, and there has been very good acceptance within the department in the role that everyone must play to ensure the content is kept up to date, and the comfort and ease with which the editing can be done by the teams has helped to earn this acceptance and team commitment.
The site looks better, works better, is easier to maintain, has more information and is, finally, under control.