2024 website launch
Here is everything you need to know about the new home page refresh including what's happened and how it will be rolled out. This includes how you can help prepare a quality product for all of our customers prior to public launch.
Over the past few months, Councils' Web Replacement Project has been working on a website design to provide a better customer experience with the rollout of the new corporate brand.
Why is the website being updated?
While the priority was to ensure we had a secure and flexible back-end, we also wanted to refresh the customer experience. Not only has the new Council brand been incorporated, we have also implemented a data-driven design that will help our customers do business with council in a way that suits them.
There is a new brand
To better represent Sunshine Coast Council, the team have been implementing a cleaner brand which is being rolled out across all Council assets.
We have been listening to customer feedback
The development team have been conducting user interviews alongside the business teams to get the best reflection of how customers use the current website. This real-world data has provide valuable information into the best approach to organise the websites structure and layout.
We have reviewed the data
The rollout of the new website design has been completed with insight from live data recorded over the past 12 months to provide evidence-based outcomes to support (or debunk) assumptions from anecdotal feedback.
This has been completed with user interviews from actual customers to understand how the existing website is used in real-life scenarios.
The combined results have provided a customer-centric action plan for brand implementation, layout and content structure.
How will the new rollout happen?
Over the next few weeks, the new website design will be rolled out in a staggered approach to provide all stakeholders the opportunity to provide thoughtful feedback before a public launch.
This will help ensure a seamless transition with minimal impact on customers and website users.
Phase 1 - Beta Release
During the first week of June, the existing internal preview site will transition to the new 2024 website design. This will allow all internal stakeholders and authors to review their respective pages and provide feedback and raise issues.
The current date for internal testing is during the first week/s of June 2024.
It will be business as usual with creating, editing and managing content. The only difference will be the live website will continue to serve the current look and feel. The preview site will serve the new look and feel.
Tell us if something isn't right
The preview site has a new feature to capture feedback directly from the pages. You will see the red 'feedback' button on the right side of each page. Click the button to have the feedback form display.
The feedback form will provide us with important information including:
- Your comments with screenshots/Browser information
- Page information and app version number
- If available, debugging logs for problematic pages
This will allow the development team immediate access to issues as they arise. These issues will be triaged and prioritised based on priority, issue severity and customer impact.
When lodging feedback, please be aware of the app version number and the time the last release was updated.
This can be found on the bottom left-hand side of the app.
Will everything be fixed before release to the public?
The short answer is no. Only high-priority issues will be scheduled to be fixed before the public release. This will be managed by the Web Team.
This is to ensure the Release Candidate is stable and will provide the majority of customers with the best experience.
Any new features or enhancements will be backlogged until a future release slot can be provided.
Please be aware, that all team members are working to a short timeline. We appreciate your patience and your understanding.
Phase 2 - Release Candidate
Once the internal beta release has been completed, the team will prepare the first Release Candidate. This release candidate will only be available to internal users. It will not be made available to the public.
Internally, both the preview website and the live website will have transitioned to the new website design.
The team have internal logging tools to track all pages viewed which will help to capture issues as they arise.
The current date for this release is scheduled for the week beginning 10th June 2024.
This ensures edge cases are captured before the public launch and provides the last opportunity for internal users to provide feedback.
Again, any issues will be triaged and packaged for the 2nd Release Candidate
Phase 3 - Final Release Candidate
This is the final release ready for a public launch and it will only be made available to a randomly selected percent of customers.
This means not everyone will get access to the new website design. This is the final stage to ensure everything works as expected and provide the first opportunity to get real-world tests before the full public launch.
Phase 4 - Public Release
Party 🎉! The website is fully launched to all customers.
The current date for this release is the final week of June, 2024.
The 2024 website design is now live and moves into maintenance mode.
Data and analytics will be tracked and measured against current benchmarks. This information will provide insights against previous data-driven decisions to validate and measure any improvements achieved.
We would like to thank everyone for all their hard work and dedication to creating an amazing experience for our customers and allowing the Sunshine Coast Council to deliver quality products and services.
Have questions?
If you have any questions please raise a service request ticket to the Web Team.