Stephen Hale

Head of Engagement, Digital Diplomacy

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Monday 26 October, 2009

New look Foreign Office website

If you looked at the Foreign Office website over the weekend, you might have noticed that it didn't look quite the same as it used to, and that the content wasn't quite structured in the same way.

We've made some changes to design, information architecture and content. We've aimed for high impact pages - using bold imagery - that give us more scope for editorial flexibility. And we've tried to provide a much clearer hierarchy of stories, guiding readers to Foreign Office priorities, as well as serving our users needs better.

We applied the changes on Saturday, and there's still some work to do tidying up content in the new templates. But this is an iterative programme of improvements rather than a relaunch. We'll follow up the changes to our main site by doing the same thing for our social media content (including our blogs), and our country websites.

I'm really pleased with the changes, and excited by what we can do with our new pages, particularly in our new Global issues channel, which will be the focus for most of our campaigns and digital engagement work. But I'd be really interested to hear what you think. Have we achieved what we set out to?

BTW, none of this work cost any extra money - we've done it in house. We're fortunate to have some brilliant people working in digital diplomacy group including Rodney Zandbergs (design) Rob Pearson (IA) Alison Daniels (editorial) and Paul Hosking (implementation). I think they've done an impressive job. 

Posted at 14:17 26 October 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[9]

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I like the new design, very clear and accessible. Just one thing: We seem to be moving towards a more integrated, global outlook in how things are addressed, especially in fp. Yet no blog from our multilateral missions UKUN, UNGEN, UKBrussels. Would be good to hear from people in these places.

Posted by Dom on October 27, 2009 at 03:43 PM GMT #

Thanks Dom. You're right - at the moment only John Duncan is blogging from a multilateral mission. I'll pass your comment on.

Posted by Stephen Hale on October 28, 2009 at 12:45 PM GMT #

>>We're fortunate to have some brilliant people working in digital diplomacy group And you don't pay them anything, presumably ?

Posted by Dave on October 28, 2009 at 05:19 PM GMT #

Impressive. I must admit, working as a Web Editor for the Swedish MFA, I am both impressed with your design and how you present your information. It makes our website www.ud.se look like something pulled out from the 90s – which it is actually. I think that what really impresses me is the fact that you seem to have managed to change the mind set of your ministry – which I am aware of is not an easy thing. The web is no longer something that some geeky although geekiness is always an asset bunch of people do on the side. It is something that – modern organisations at least – is at the very foundation of an organisation. Great Work!

Posted by André Mkandawire on October 29, 2009 at 12:30 PM GMT #

Looks great - a vast improvement on all aspects from visual appeal to text labels. Props to the team!

Posted by Neil Williams on November 01, 2009 at 12:42 PM GMT #

A good job, well done. I hope those working on new-build projects within other government departments take note. In the long-term, a well structured network of government information assets structured around user-needs should enhance the function of public services and provide greater value to the taxpayer. Your in-house team's work proves that it is possible to both be innovative and 'save' money. 2 brief questions if I may: i. Is anyone looking at a broad, cross-government information/comms. strategy, for example how websites and social media presences of UKTI might complement/integrate with Foreign Office content? ii. How will the websites of overseas posts be integrated in to the new site? Are there plans to decentralise/distribute control to overseas press/comms. officers within a flexible IA and design framework?

Posted by Charles Osborne on November 01, 2009 at 01:18 PM GMT #

Charles - thanks for you comments. On your specific questions: i: most of our work is cross-government, so we often link up eg with the Treasury on the London Summit campaign, with DECC on climate change, with MoD on Afghanistan. Of course the role of our embassies is to represent the whole of government overseas, so it's often the FCO who join HMG up. Domestically it's really more the remit of the Cabinet Office. ii. We're looking at post websites next. They're already integrated in that they all sit on the same platform, using the same domain, and they all share content. Our next task is to refresh the look and feel in the same way we have done for the main site, and make sure the user journeys between our sites and our off-platform content is as smooth as it can be. I'll report back on how we do that.

Posted by Stephen Hale on November 03, 2009 at 07:32 PM GMT #

I like your use of strong images, but have some questions on the homepage design. There seems a lot of duplication on the homepage. You have the navigation below the large main image travelling & living abroad, global issues etc and then immediately below that you have this same navigation as headers of 3 columns. Also, to the right of the main images are 3 smaller images taking you to news stories, yet 2 of these 3 are repeated further down the page in the 'news' section. Was this was done deliberately? The main image is very large and on my work monitor takes up 80 of the screen hence pushing the majority of the content below the fold, did you consider this when designing the page? Thanks

Posted by Stuart on November 09, 2009 at 09:15 AM GMT #

Hi Stuart. Stephen has asked me to reply as I was involved in the decisions which lead to the structure of the page. It’s been a complex project so this answer is a bit long... and it doesn't look like our blog comments show paragraph breaks. Doh! First, duplication of content: One of the jobs of any home page is to establish the global navigation here, the first row of links under the main image. This element has to be there otherwise users could be disorientated as they click into the site from the home page. It’s also the job of any home page to surface the contents of the site: to display its wares, as it were. The three column elements Travel / Global issues / About us do this, speaking directly to our goal-focused users by highlighting task-related content within each section. SO …these elements have to be there too, and the first duplication was unavoidable. I agree, however, that the duplication of news articles is less than ideal. A user who is interested in a topic is likely to click on the first relevant link anyway, leaving the second redundant. I’ve taken this up with the Press Office, and I think we can put it down to a process that is a bit unrefined. Next, the large image: We needed to achieve three goals with the new design and these shaped the home page with their own, sometimes conflicting considerations: - Apply the new brand to the site - Promote our campaign messages and showcase our editorial leadership with real impact, ie. show big stories - Make the site more user friendly and content more findable The feature elements including the large image at the top of the page meet the first and second of these requirements, although I won’t go into the sweat that went into reconciling the brand guidelines with the editorial requirements. The three column elements, by highlighting goal oriented content, help to meet the third. The design itself is optimised for a 1024w screen resolution. About 93 of our users meet or exceed this, and although it’s not ideal, the 7 with lower resolutions need to do a little extra scrolling. We were very conscious of where the fold would lie and explicitly designed the page such that the 3 column elements Travel / Global issues / About us would at least peep above it to promote this key content. Overall we felt that the trade-off between the extra impact that more screen real-estate gave us, and the inconvenience to a small and falling fraction of users was worth it. Incidentally, throughout the project we validated our approach by usability testing with actual users, the results of which significantly shaped the outcome. Thanks for commenting, Rob

Posted by Rob Pearson on November 10, 2009 at 02:29 PM GMT #

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