Case PALTA ry
Overhauling an online service to improve the effectiveness of communications
Service Sector Employers PALTA ry is a business and labour market organisation representing service industry companies. Redland designed and launched an online service renewal project for the organisation, based on user research.
Starting point
In the spring of 2020, the importance of digital communications became ever clearer and Palta wanted to modernise its online services to be more user-friendly. The old web service had brought about technical challenges for both users and webmasters. The aim of the new service was to be as accessible as possible to all user groups, so that everyone could understand and use it.
In addition, the organisation had undergone a branding redesign that needed to be highlighted on the online service, as well. Despite the limited budget, the aim was to execute a high-quality transformation of the service that would also take into account the possibilities for further development.
Solution
The aim of the online service renewal was to tell about the importance of the service industry, as well as about Palta’s goals, operations and the information it produces in a clearer, more open and people-friendly manner. For an organisation that produces a lot of communications content, it was key to make the process of updating content on the service much easier. From the point of view of the customer experience, the updates were aimed at improving the usability and accessibility of the site. The design process kicked off with a user survey.
The results of the user survey highlighted the importance of finding content and the lack of clarity in the structure of the old site’s front page. The survey also identified the most critical user needs and provided a strong foundation for service design. In designing the new service, customer experience was improved by clarifying user paths and the structure of the online service. The discoverability of content was improved by structuring the content aimed at different target groups into clear sets.
Implementation
The website’s visuals were redesigned to better suit Palta’s new brand, and the navigation was designed to meet the needs of various user groups and content types. For example, the structure of the current affairs section was developed to be clearer so that different newsletters, articles, and blogs would be easy to find.
In the section on membership and member services, events were highlighted as separate, key content. Getting in touch was made clear and simple for all user groups: contact information, social media links and a newsletter subscription form are displayed on all pages.
The online service was created on the WordPress platform and updates to content are now convenient to manage with the new Gutenberg editor. Accessibility on the site was improved both visually and technically.
Results
The new online service at palta.fi was launched in January 2021. The first user experiences have been very promising: the new site has been well received and had positive feedback within the customer’s organisation. A plan has been made for further development, which includes ideas that came up during the project.
“At Palta, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis we realised that our digital services were in urgent need of a total transformation. Our digital partner Redland redesigned the look, usability and accessibility of our online service, increasing the communicative impact and relevance of the service to various target groups.”
