Northumberland Council meets April 1st deadline with new interactive web site.

When newly formed Unitary Authority Northumberland County Council planned their new website, an important requirement was for more council business to be conducted online, giving people instant access to information and services, and reducing the need for direct contact with the council. The April 1^st launch deadline was set in stone and they had 3 months to design, build and populate a site offering over 700 council services.

Extensive usability testing by the Council indicated that site visitors expected to find the information they wanted within 2 minutes, it also reinforced how vitally important the navigation and page layout is.

To support Northumberland’s vision for a truly interactive site which would reduce the need for residents, businesses and visitors to the area having to contact the Council by ‘phone’, the right technology platform was required, along with an implementation partner who really understood the public sector and would get fully behind the Council’s vision.

Based on these requirements, the Council selected the Alterian Immediacy WCMS for its ease of use, rapid deployment capabilities and extensibility, with Unified Solutions chosen due to their public sector experience, knowledge of Immediacy and synergy with the Council team. Northumberland installed the full suite of Immediacy local government plug ins which Unified customised to their specific requirements.

The end result has been the creation of a highly intuitive, informative and interactive site, The website automatically identifies most regularly accessed pages, FAQs and other popular items of content and then adapts to make these items the easiest to find.

To read more about the Northumberland CC project go to the Northumberland Case Study

or contact sales@unified.co.uk or telephone 01753 775050