Website relaunch
Our new, redesigned website is now live.
As well as a fresh look and feel, our site is now easier to read, less cluttered and contains less jargon. We've restructured a number of sections to make it simpler, more logical, and make it easier for you to find what you need.
There are several features we think you'll like and find easier to use:
- Improved responsive design for PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone.
- Easier to find what you're looking for with simplified and clear navigation.
- Quick access to all services.
- Cleaner and consistent page layouts, less cluttered pages.
- Improved site search facility.
- Updated accessibility standards for people with visual, hearing or readability impairments.
Most of our visitors now use the website on a mobile device, so we needed to improve their browsing experience. The old templates were not fully optimised for mobile and tablets.
The website has not had a full redesign since 2011 and looks out of date and cluttered compared to other modern websites.
We also wanted to make this website as easy to use as possible, with clear calls to action, news and campaign areas.
To plan the overall design and structure, we've had help from our Customer Voice scrutiny panel, who are made up of Derby Homes' tenants.
We partnered with Derby City Council and used award winning design agency, Jadu Spacecraft, who are based here in the East Midlands, to:
- Produce design concepts, wireframes and visual mock-ups with a modern 'look and feel' and a focus on a high quality user experience (UX).
- Manage and moderate use case scenario sessions, with our Digital and Web Team, to consider how different users use the site.
- Project manage the design and discovery phase.
- Produce iterations of 3 design prototypes to fine-tune the final accepted designs (each design concept included page layouts for a new homepage, landing page, content page, specialist service page)
- Produce all HTML, CSS and JavaScript code and all additional visual resources.
- Validate all supplied resources for compliance with accessibility standards.
The total cost was £55,500 to rebuild both our website, and the new Derby City Council site.
All of the subsequent site build, and all of the content migration, was done by our Communications Team, with help from the Council's Web Team.
We have not procured any additional software or hardware as we have used our existing web servers and network infrastructure.
You may need to update your bookmarks.
Some content pages may have moved or been renamed.
We have also removed some old, out of date content, and tried to consolidate information where we can.
Some documents have also been removed and the information included on site pages.
This isn't the end of our focus on the website. We will continue to make improvements and alterations based on feedback, trends, usage and changes to our services. We intend to involve customers wherever possible to ensure the content is built around you.
You can give us specific feedback about any part of this website using our feedback form. This will send your completed for to our Communication Team.
Alternatively, you could sign up to our Virtual Customer Panel to be notified when we're consulting on bigger changes or asking for input into future development of content or sections.