blog.gov.jeThe Digital Delivery Team is 60% female including 3 fairly new mothers (and, at the time of writing, one very pregnant lady!). We’re responsible for UX and content strategy on gov.je, this means it’s our job to merge people and technology and make sure that our customers have a positive experience when they’re engaging with our online information and services. So naturally we had strong views on the information and services provided around maternity and starting a family on gov.je, and after a few discussions and shared experiences we decided that the information about maternity and having a baby provided on gov.je wasn’t up to scratch, so we went out and did some research with new mums to see what they thought.
User research: meeting mums and hearing their stories
We visited baby weigh-in clinics across the Island, we held focus groups for new mothers to attend at St Paul’s Centre, we spent time in the ante-natal reception at the hospital and we joined in at playgroups. We spoke to new mums and dads about their experiences and found out their thoughts and feelings around the information available to them about having a baby, we listened to their stories about becoming parents and asked them what they wanted and needed. Not going to lie, this was also a great opportunity for snuggles with lots of scrummy newborns!
To reach a wider customer base we also ran a ‘Mums helping mums’ digital marketing campaign to promote our ‘Having a baby online survey’ and we even appeared on radio and TV.
Having a baby survey: the results
The survey consisted of 12 questions and was aimed at pregnant women and women who had already had a baby.
We promoted the survey online using:
- MyStates
- gov.je
We had nearly 300 people complete our survey and the results showed that most people were struggling to find information about having a baby easily. They also thought the current information about fertility, pregnancy, giving birth and aftercare on gov.je wasn’t very good. Just as we suspected.
Customers wanted a friendlier, informal and visual one-stop shop for information about starting a family, they don’t want to have to visit multiple sites and departments or rely on word of mouth to get what they need.
Conclusions
From our research, we could confirm:
- customers are coming to gov.je for information on maternity topics confirming a need for the development of maternity content
- we’re on the right track with our mapped customer journey. Nearly all the suggested topics that were given were already included on our map
- customers want to be able to find all relevant information in one place and they want that information to be detailed and specific
- customers want our maternity content to be less formal, have a friendly tone and be more visual
- customers want to know who to contact about different matters during their journey and they want those contact details available to them on gov.je and be easy to find
- customers want it made very clear exactly what’s expected of them
- customers want better communication between departments
Customer journey mapping
So, now the results were in and we knew that customers shared our frustrations, it was time to get to work and map out our customers’ journey.
We all got in a room and again shared our experiences and results of our research to build a visual representation of a customer’s journey through the maternity / starting a family process:
Once we had this in place and agreed with our stakeholders in Health and Community Services and Family Nursing and Homecare we started thinking about our design.
Creating a more visual and engaging design
Customer’s feedback suggested that we needed a friendlier, more visual website. They found the current site too formal and lacking in any personality.
So, we designed a new template for gov.je, which looks a bit like this:
As you can see the new design has a lot more imagery, more use of colour and is far more engaging. It also works beautifully on mobile.
Working with midwifes: creating brand new, useful and engaging content
We worked closely with midwifes and maternity staff to plan and create brand new content for the new site that covered a customer’s journey through having a baby. We were also very mindful to include information for same sex couples and couples who may be struggling to get pregnant, this information had never existed before.
The new content is much more detailed and includes information about:
- getting help to get pregnant, including IVF, surrogacy and assisted reproduction
- problems and concerns in pregnancy
- antenatal care, appointments and scans
- health and wellbeing during and after pregnancy
- labour and birth including what to pack in your hospital bag, antenatal classes, birth plans and options, pain relief and recovery
- maternity facilities including a video tour of delivery suites, the maternity ward and private rooms and information about visiting times
- caring for your newborn including feeding, screening tests and registering your baby
- financial support including maternity grant, maternity allowance, Home Responsibility Protection and Income Support
- support for new parents including information about the wide range of services available to new parents on the Island
Creating a service which our customers prefer to use
We’re really proud of the new pregnancy and birth information on gov.je and we hope that it will make a huge difference to the experience new parents have when starting or indeed adding to their families.
We plan to run another survey soon to measure the success of the new site, and we’re always keen to hear feedback, so please tell your friends about it and let us know your thoughts.