New year, new website: how we’ve updated our website based on your feedback

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve visited the Skills for Care website before. If not, then welcome! You’ll have noticed it’s a vast website with a wide and varied range of information and support for the adult social care workforce - from recruitment support, to ways and means of developing your workforce, current news and events, and the latest data and insights about the sector.

You may have had frustrations when you’ve visited our website previously because you couldn’t find what you were looking for or you might have gotten a little lost and a task that should have taken five minutes might have taken 15. We know this because you told us, and we made a commitment to make some improvements because we know how precious your time is.

We also know that our website didn’t meet the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA standards. Put simply, our website wasn’t accessible for all, and this was something we needed and wanted to improve on.

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to address the challenges we faced to bring you our new website.

We’ve worked with a team of technical experts to develop a new digital design system that allows us to create consistency across the website, making it easier and more intuitive for our visitors to absorb the information on the page and navigate their way around our website.

We’ve implemented a new menu navigation that allows our website users to see their journey as they navigate through the site to find the information they’re searching for. The visibility of the menu and sub-menus make it much easier to understand where you are on the website and go back if you’ve taken a wrong turn.

We’ve looked at the way the content of the site is structured and the terminology that we use to present the information to you, to make it easier for you to put the information into the context of your needs. We’ve also stripped back the content on each page to produce a clean and clear site, so you can find the information you’re looking for without being distracted by extra ‘noise’ on the page.

The most important point to note is that we’ve done it all with your help.

At every step of the way, we’ve engaged with adult social care workers in varying roles to gain a better understanding of how people use our website, how they understand the content on our pages, and how different topics are grouped together across the site.

We’ve spoken with people working across social care about everything from page design to the menu navigation, to the terminology used. Without the help of these participants, we wouldn’t have been able to create a new website that meets the needs of our visitors and so I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you; we’ve gained invaluable insights through this process because of you.

The journey doesn’t stop here though, as both the sector and the digital world change and evolve so too will our website to continue to always meet the needs of the social care workforce.

But for now, I’d like to invite you to go and take look at the new Skills for Care website - we’d love to hear what you think and welcome any feedback at marketing@skillsforcare.org.uk.

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