Total 375 words used.
The TxDOT.gov redesign aimed to rebuild an aging 10-year-old site that had never been optimized for mobile devices and was difficult to navigate without in-depth knowledge of TxDOT’s internal organization. Our redesign began in 2020 and sought to improve ADA conformance, enhance SEO, rebuild the information architecture to better reflect the needs of target audiences, and improve the user experience. By delivering a website with modern design and UI elements, we made the site easier to navigate and eliminated the feel of “just another government website.”
Our stakeholders include commuters, businesses, and government entities. The commuter group is comprised of drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and aviators. The business group includes consultants, contractors, and vendors. The government entities are local governments, legislative offices, and other state agencies.
We began the redesign by conducting user testing over a 2.5-month period, which included 70 interviews with over 150 stakeholders. We compared their feedback to four quarters of web analytics before developing the preliminary site architecture. Stakeholders previewed the site architecture and provided additional feedback. The development team reiterated the architecture several times with the help of our stakeholders.
Previously, users had to select from three buckets to navigate the site: Driver, Business, or Government. These three areas didn’t address all our audience types, so we shifted from an audience-based approach to a topic/task-based approach. The site now has six main navigation items to better direct users to their content without needing to identify as a specific audience type. We structured the IA under the main navigation items to be wide and shallow, so users don’t get lost in deep and complex navigation.
Initial site analytics demonstrate increases to all primary metrics: unique visitors are up 8.3%, visits are up 10.1%, page views are up 8.5%, and downloads are up 27%.
Search engine optimization (SEO) performance also improved significantly. Of the top 1000 search terms that brought people to TxDOT.gov, 621 ranked as the first result in Google and 316 ranked in position two through eight.
ADA compliance increased substantially. The redesign project corrected over 500 ADA-related issues, improving ADA compliance from 68.8% to 95.9%. The benchmark for government sites is 84.7%.
Link for entry form: https://www.txdot.gov/
Nomination Title: txdot.gov Navigation Structure
