PROVIDENCE – The official website for the state of Rhode Island has a new look.
Revamped this summer with the new design, ri.gov features a high-resolution picture of Narragansett Bay and a minimalistic layout.
Scrolling navigation, billed as easy-to-use, brings high-priority content to the front, according to a news release from Rhode Island Interactive, which developed and maintains the website through a collaboration between the state Department of Administration’s Office of Digital Excellence.
Rhode Island Interactive is a subsidiary of NIC Inc., an information service provider for federal and state government in the United States headquartered in Olathe, Kan.
To come up with the new design, Rhode Island Interactive said it conducted citizen and government staff user testing prior to and post redesign; tracked Google analytics by page views, mobile device access, and user geographical location; and studied trending search terms using USA.gov, powered by Bing.
The design team at Rhode Island Interactive said it learned from the testing that a prominent search bar remained the preferred method of finding information quickly on the site.
In addition, analytics proved that more than 20 percent of RI.gov users were accessing the portal home page via a mobile or tablet device, making a responsive design essential.
Because the most searched for terms were press-related, news was a top content priority.
“The result is a user-driven RI.gov that better supports citizen to government interaction,” the release said.
