Designing and developing a new website for the Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, we created an interactive platform for the public to get involved and find essential healthcare information.

Background

Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) commissioned the collaborative  Campaigns, Creative and Digital (CCD) team from NHS Midlands and Lancashire, Arden & GEM Commissioning Support Units to project manage the design and delivery of a new WordPress website in six months.

The new website needed to support the transition from Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to ICB, but with a fresher look and feel – incorporating their new branding. The ICB wanted the new website to follow a similar user layout, but they were conscious that it needed to act as a central hub of information to explain integrated care and show how the different parts of the health and care system fit together. Accessibility was also a priority for the new website.

Action

After reviewing the current website, our Digital team identified that performance was slow, and that website optimisation was required to improve user experience (UX), traffic flow and engagement. We worked closely with the ICB to clarify the user journey and agree on a site map. We made recommendations based on our expert knowledge of web builds, and we clarified the ICB’s objectives, which included:

• Using more images and video to engage and boost traffic
• Clear and prominent branding including new logo designs for the ICB rebrand
• Centring the design and layout around the new corporate vision and values
• Migrating content from the old site and optimising it for SEO with meta descriptions and tags
• Improving search functionality with easy content tagging that can be used across the whole site
• Integrating translation and accessibility tools within the site to improve access and engagement for those with language, literacy, and sensory impairment.

Weekly project meetings provided the opportunity to address any issues, and to advise on timescales and any risk factors which could impact delivery.

Our digital specialists followed a robust series of industry-standard quality checks, ensured the site met all accessibility compliance guidelines, and tested for mobile and desktop browser optimisation. This enabled any potential issues to be identified and resolved before launch.

Impact

We custom-built the new website on WordPress, as this provides a single dashboard and brings efficiencies for the ICB Communications team. We used Timber to build the templates within WordPress, as this gives better security and performance and allows our team to easily implement code changes – offering longer-term development flexibility.

Browsealoud was installed to support visually impaired users, and a WordPress accessibility tool helps the administrators check that header tags are suitable for screen readers.

To improve the user journey, we colour-themed each section, and added home page sliders, clickable call-to-action buttons and visual banners. Our developer improved the functionality of the search bar results to help users to find the page they need with fewer clicks.

After six months of dedicated support, the new interactive website was launched in July 2022. The site clearly signposts visitors to relevant content and provides a valuable resource.

Embedded video content and bold call-to-action buttons on the home page have created an interactive platform for the public to get involved and find essential healthcare information. Internal links to navigate traffic across the site has optimised the webpages.

There has been a clear improvement in how visitors engage with the new website. Visitor traffic rose from 4,000 to 5,100 following the launch of the new ICB website. The most popular pages are about walk-in vaccinations and GP consultations.

View the new website at www.lincolnshire.icb.nhs.uk

“The team were aware of our objectives and clearly identified how the new website needed to clearly signpost and better engage stakeholders and the general public as well as staff through the Intranet. The new website is fully accessible, and better optimised for organic searches, with easier to navigate information. The team are easy to work with, responsive to our requests and always work to find a solution that meets our needs. We are really pleased with our new website, it is easy to use, the training and materials were really helpful, the end product meets our expectations and ongoing support is fantastic.”

Stephanie Foster | Web and Social Media Officer | NHS Lincolnshire ICB