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A new look for the Office of Economic Development’s website

Our website has a new look, and we’re excited to share it with you!  

Over the past year, we’ve been working on a refresh of our website which includes a new home page design, reorganized sitemap, and updated content on program pages.

Our goal: make it easier for people to navigate the site and find information about our programs and work. The result is a website better prioritizes the end-user – you!

Pre-design

To create a website that is more accessible and prioritizes the most-requested information, we started by looking at the data, including what content people were looking for the most and how we could make it easier to find. We also looked to see if we had the same information in multiple places, broken links, and unnecessary or outdated information. Once we cleaned up old pages and content as needed, we prioritized placement of certain pages and resources based on the data.

We also got input on how best to reorganize content from two key groups: we partnered closely with OED staff from different teams to share their thoughts on what works and where they saw room for improvement. We also recruited external test users whose work experience matched our target audiences — small business owners, community development workers, and government employees. Based on specific prompts, they tested our existing website to see how easy it was to find certain information. These users also weighed in on whether the content they saw was helpful or if it left them with more questions.

This feedback showed us how difficult certain pages or resources were to find and helped us identify where users may be getting lost.

Design and testing

Using test feedback and user experience (UX) best practices, we worked with the City of Seattle’s User Experience team to begin reorganizing the website. With the help of subject matter experts, we created a new layout with a balanced redesign that reflects the forward-looking vision of our department and tested our new design with users from several local organizations that work directly with our office to provide feedback. We were excited to see how people familiar with our website and services responded to the new design and helped us refine it.

What you’ll see now

Our refreshed website is live! In addition to a new homepage look and website navigation, we worked to refresh content across as many pages as possible and will continue to keep the site fresh. This means updated information and resources in addition to photos, and videos.

Our focus in this process was to improve readability and accessibility. We removed inaccessible web assets and improved the website language to support a wider range of languages when translated.

We also applied best practices to web copy, reducing the amount of on-page text to ensure the most vital information is easier to find.

We hope you enjoy our new site as much as we do. We’re excited to use it as a tool to continue serving you and everyone who drives Seattle’s economy!