Building a digital home for the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority

With the mayoral election results set to be announced at midnight on May 7, 2024, the team needed a fully functional digital presence ahead of time, one that would evolve alongside the growing needs of the organisation and its expanding audience.

For NECA, this wasn’t just about creating a website, it was about building a digital foundation for a region's future. Staff at all levels would need the ability to quickly create and publish large volumes of content while ensuring that information remained accurate, accessible, and compliant with government standards. The NECA team needed a flexible design system that brough together reusable components, consistent design patterns, and clear guidelines for content governance. It was essential that the website be not only a tool for communication, but a trusted hub for sensitive and impactful information that could reach all types of readers, from local residents and community leaders to policymakers and businesses.

As a brand-new authority, the digital estate needed to be built from the ground up, with flexibility for future growth. It required a balancing act of building a digital solution that could meet the immediate needs of the region while leaving room for it to evolve as the organisation’s understanding of its audience grew. This meant planning for the future while delivering a platform that was ready to launch at a pivotal moment.

In the end, this wasn’t just about meeting a deadline. It was about laying the groundwork for effective communication in a rapidly changing environment, ensuring that the North East Combined Authority could serve its diverse communities with the information they need, in the right format, at the right time.

Stakeholder consultation

Our content design and UX team led consultations with a large group of stakeholders to understand the goals and structure of the new organisation. We identified core organisational needs and defined key audience groups, which ranged from residents across the region through to business leaders and government policy makers. It was imperative that the sites were easy to navigate, with information presented in a clear, readable, and accessible way.This discovery phase allowed us to identify what information should be foregrounded on the new websites, and which features would be essential to include at the time of launch.

In-depth content audit

The creation of the new North East Combined Authority website, required changes to be made to other areas of the digital estate, included project sites like the North East Evidence Hub, North East Ambition and the North East Growth Hub.
We conducted a broad content audit of these existing sites and platforms, to identify where content would need to be updated once the new organisation was in place.

Conducting the audit prior to the election meant that it was done without the knowledge of what the new leadership would look like. We focused on what essential information had to be communicated at the time of launch, while creating the flexibility to add further detail once the election results were announced.

In-built house style

The Combined Authority has a large group of content managers, all with access to edit and publish on the web. With this in mind, it was important to build in tools that promote collaboration and consistency across all websites.

We created a branded digital design system that gives editors the tools they need to create new content that fits the Combined Authority brand, and follows best practice for usability and accessibility. This design system is deployed across all sites in the estate, ensuring a seamless and coherent user experience.

Training for in-house content editors

The Combined Authority identified a core group of content editors who would need access to add and update content on the site from launch. We provided tailored training for them depending on their requirements – some would need full edit access, while others were responsible for a smaller subset of tasks such as uploading documents or publishing news articles.

The training covered both the practicalities of creating pages using the content components available in the design system, as well as best practice for writing for the web to ensure pages are usable and accessible.

We continue to support the Combined Authority’s content editors, by provided training for new editors and new features, as well as offering advice and guidance on content creation.