The ECITB is the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, a national arms-length body of the UK Government. Following a competitive tender process, we were pleased to be selected as the preferred supplier to develop new UK and Global WordPress websites for the organisation.
Creating intuitive user journeys was very much at the heart of the project. With a broad range of responsibilities and numerous stakeholders, the ECITB had faced an ongoing challenge of how to make content easy to find for different audiences.
We got things underway with a comprehensive discovery and planning phase with key ECITB stakeholders to address user journeys and content organisation head on. The process enabled a clear plan to be formulated for the websites’ navigation and content structure, as well as enabling key calls to action to be identified.
The UK homepage now features an engaging header area which provides users with a clear, high-level overview of the organisation’s purpose. The header area also accommodates video media showcasing the breadth of the ECITB’s work and helps younger audiences understand the organisation’s key role in career progression and development opportunities.
Based on the planning undertaken in the discovery phase, the UK homepage has a prominent call to action for the CCNSG Safety Passport, the nationally recognised safety card for the UK engineering construction industry. Around 26,000 workers complete the course each year and the new call to action makes it easy for audiences to find a training provider with which to attain a passport.
A new training search feature also has prime placement on the UK homepage and greatly enhances the user experience when searching for courses, qualifications, tests and approved providers. The feature enables users to choose multiple disciplines in their search, share their location and set a date range to readily identify suitable courses relevant to their roles.
Additional improvements from previous training listings are an optimised user experience on mobile devices, training suggestions, and the ability to browse profiles of providers linked from training / qualification pages. Pages of interest can also be easily liked / saved for ease of review later.
To make it easy for the ECITB to administer training listings, we developed a bespoke custom import tool that populates training information from a spreadsheet / CSV upload. These imported records can be then bulk published, or edited individually within the CMS, as required.
The content strategy planning in the discovery phase enabled Cyber Media and the ECITB project team to implement new primary content groupings for key audiences, which are promoted on the website homepages.
On the UK homepage the four primary content groupings are:
Supporting individuals already working within engineering construction.
For easy to digest resources for young people considering a career in the industry.
Providing companies with key information, including on strategy and grants.
Providing guidance on how to become an ECITB-approved training provider.
The new organisation of content has made the websites easier to use and explore and ensures audiences can locate information quickly, which was further enhanced by our introduction of updated templates to refresh and modernise the design.
The updated design we implemented achieves brand consistency for the UK and Global websites and projects a professional image for the ECITB. The introduction of rounded design elements and a broader colour palette has also been successful in creating an approachable and friendly look and feel. To complement the design and to aid content navigation, our team created a library of icons that the ECITB team can use flexibly throughout the websites.
The new design is highly accessible, meeting WCAG 2.2 ‘AA’ standards for PSBAR compliance.
The new UK and Global websites provide the ECITB with a modern platform to promote its work and broad offer to individuals and organisations within the engineering construction industry. Audiences are now able to access the right information quickly and easily through an intuitive information structure presented within an engaging, accessible design.
Behind the scenes, a new flexible template makes it quick and easy for ECITB editors to create engaging new content within the WordPress CMS.
Our experience with WordPress has enabled the successful delivery of the project with minimal use of third-party plugins, helping to ensure the new websites are easy to maintain and reliable in operation for years to come.
