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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 with our stakeholders who performed common website tasks while we observed. Internally, we interviewed stakeholders and subject matter experts from every district and division within TxDOT. They explained the needs of their customers and told us what the website needed to do for them. Concurrently, we developed an in-house style guide and began rewriting the existing website for search engine optimization, while also consolidating pages and deleting outdated content. This strategy allowed us to streamline the upcoming content migration before we finalized the new design. After completing the initial work, we reinterviewed the stakeholders and demoed the new site for final feedback before launch.
Our development team used a Scrum framework to implement the site redesign. The agile Scrum process offered greater flexibility for evolving coding requirements while the UX team continued to interview stakeholders and document requirements. The development team created a series of components, each specific to a different content type. The components enable authors with no HTML experience to create and author pages. Previously, authors would add snippets of code to add components. Now they simply drag and drop components onto the page.
Site improvements include better use of images and white space, sortable data, friendly and less bureaucratic language, thoughtful navigation, and a revamped search engine with filtering capability.
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 Web Design
