West of England Mayoral Combined Authority

Bringing about digital transformation for a major government authority.

The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority is made up of three councils in the West of England: Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset.

JBi Digital was appointed to build an industry leading website for the Combined Authority, bringing together each of its existing websites and brands under one roof:

1. The West of England Combined Authority
2. The West of England Growth Hub
3. Invest Bristol & Bath (IBB)

The key challenge was to combine the Combined Authority’s separate websites into a single, unified online home, while maintaining a distinctive look and feel for each sub-brand.

Defining user and business requirements through a collaborative Discovery phase.

The Combined Authority’s new website needed to represent 8 separate internal teams, each with its own priorities for serving residents, businesses and stakeholders. The Discovery phase was therefore focused on ensuring that each team was able to contribute directly and make its unique voice heard.

To achieve this, we ran dedicated workshops with each team, deep diving into their objectives and priorities and exploring the needs of their various audiences. The insights gained from this process, coupled with our analysis of the Combined Authority’s existing websites, helped form our strategy for the rest of the project.

We also defined which areas of the sites should be global, and which would need to be unique for each section. For example, the Combined Authority and the Growth Hub share a case study page but their events pages are distinct from one another.

The outputs of these workshops directly informed the new sitemap and information architecture, which you can read more about in the next section.

Reviewing all existing content and creating a consolidated sitemap, optimised for residents, businesses and stakeholders.

We conducted a full audit of each website’s content, working with the client’s teams to identify which pages should be retained and removed.

Our SEO team then ensured that all content was migrated in an SEO-friendly manner, with 301 redirects added for all deleted pages.

In total:

• 5,300+ pages and PDFs were migrated and consolidated into 1,600+ indexed pages
• The IBB website was consolidated from 245 pages to 65 pages

Based on the outputs of this exercise and the insights gained during the Discovery phase, we were able to produce a full sitemap covering all three websites.

Bringing together each of the Combined Authority’s websites on one CMS, with distinct brand identities for each

Based on the Combined Authority’s brief and the outputs of the Discovery phase, we recommended that the website be developed using a WordPress multisite CMS.

This achieved the following:

• Each site has its own distinct brand identity
• Each site’s teams are able to manage and edit their sections using a unique CMS
• Each site’s teams are able to manage access and permissions for their respective CMS
• All sites are able to use the same library of bespoke modules and widgets
• Each site is able to use its own unique plugins, CRMs and APIs
• Building the website in this way has given the Combined Authority a scalable, future-proof platform which allows its internal teams to tailor their sections to their audiences’ unique needs.

Bespoke design always' fulfilling client's needs.

By creating a dynamic header and top menu for the website, we were able to tie together the Combined Authority’s multisite architecture, providing users with a clear starting point for their key journeys while reinforcing each website’s distinct brand identity.

Switching between the three main sections (West of England Combined Authority, Growth Hub and IBB) causes the header’s colour scheme to change, making each sub-brand’s unique identity clear.

All of this is possible without leaving the website or domain, creating a cohesive and streamlined experience for users and stakeholders alike.

In addition, the information architecture is easily navigable within the top menu, ensuring that all users are able to access the insights, services and support that they are looking for.

A global footer was implemented in order to keep the website SEO-friendly and maintain SEO value.

JBi Digital continues to support the West of England Combined Authority through a long term digital partnership.

The JBi team is now supporting and maintaining the Combined Authority’s website on an ongoing basis as part of a long term digital partnership.

The website complies with WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, and we have provided documentation and training to the Combined Authority’s teams in order to ensure that all new content and imagery added to the site remains within the guidelines.

We have also created an optimised hosting solution, providing significant cost-savings in comparison with the previous arrangement, which involved various hosting providers and multiple domains.