Assignment: a new city website
Vdl.lu is the main online information hub for the city that has so many faces. Besides being “home” for its 450.000 habitants, Luxembourg welcomes an incredible amount commuters and visitors on a daily basis. The Municipal Administration wants to serve all these groups with good and up to date information, served in the right manner.
After analyzing the content of the (previous) existing website, we realized that hosting a broad and deep information structure in a user-friendly way would be the main challenge. Although the website tries to be very complete, web analysis showed that the majority of website visitors visited only a limited set of pages. The city agenda, news and traffic information turned out to be very popular.
Besides being user-friendly and complete, the new website should also communicate the unique Luxembourg “feeling”. Other goals included the desire to embed social media and increase SEO.
Method: a complete UX approach
Based on analysis of the main target groups, a number of concepts were created and discussed with the client. After conducting an early concept test on a lean and mean prototype, we felt confident we were on the right track.
Together with a visual designer from iProfs, one of our professional partners, we elaborated the concept to a complete package for the development partner of our client: Interaction design, Visual design and Front-end coding. Of course after validating it with a usability test conducted in our lab in the Netherlands and using a mobile lab in Luxembourg.
The physical distance between Amsterdam and Luxembourg was not an issue. Besides a number of valuable (and enjoyable) visits, collaboration took place mainly via Basecamp and Skype (conference calls).
Result: a content-rich but user-friendly website serving multiple audiences
During development, the client has worked hard to rewrite and improve existing content and insert it into the new CMS. In January the new vdl.lu website went live and the first web analytics results look good. We will be working together with the client to continuously improve the website.
More Information
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