I’m not actively involved with the findbusinesssupport.gov.scot team any more. But it’s still a service close to my heart.
I was part of the team that designed and built it in the midst of a global pandemic. And which suddenly learned, unwarned, that we would be the primary vehicle for the Scottish Government’s response to the emergency for businesses.
We were still in Beta in March 2020, so we were just routinely publishing all the data we had about usage. But, as we – de facto, if not officially – became a production service due to necessity, we just continued to do so.
She included some analytics data that seemed to indicate some significant improvements. But she only had 3 months’ worth of data, which makes it hard to draw any firm conclusions.
So we thought now, with a year’s worth of data, would be a good time to look back on what’s changed, what worked, and any opportunities for further improvement.
The FindBusinessSupport.gov.scot (FBS) website had to adapt quickly when the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit to ensure that businesses could access up-to-date information about what they needed to do and what support they could get.
Because new funds were constantly being offered, and guidance kept changing as we moved in and out of lockdown, we just added new content when changes were announced by the Scottish Government. We never had time to step back and think about the complete customer journey, and the coronavirus advice page had become very long and complex.
The challenge
The Scottish Government asked us to make it easier for businesses to access information about coronavirus funding and support on the FBS website, and they gave us two weeks to do it.
Reading Time: < 1minuteI’ve been a small part of a team working on a new digital service to help Scottish businesses prepare for Brexit.
PrepareforBrexit.scot is an effort from all the agencies and organisations in Scotland’s public sector to help equip our businesses with the tools they’ll need to anticipate and deal with any shocks caused by the UK leaving the EU.
Mostly, my focus has been on analytics, helping colleagues newly drafted into that area to get on top of their game.
The site launched on 1 November. The data should become richer over time.
Reading Time: 3minutesWe recently released a Beta version of our export health check diagnostic.
It’s a simple thing that asks you 7 questions with yes or no answers. You can run through it in 2 minutes.
We know this, because we tested it through a rapid series of iterations. We made a prototype, put it out for testing and changed it the next day based on what we had learned the night before.
In the space of a week we had something we knew worked well, that people could use comfortably and delivered something of real value.
Reading Time: 3minutesThis week, I did something I thought I’d never do: I deceived our users. Our visitors.
Our customers.
That’s pretty much a sacking offence, so maybe I should explain.
As part of the digital first team, we’re looking for ways to get user feedback. After all, how will we know if customers think our products and services are valuable unless we ask them?
We can’t always do that face to face. Is there another way?
As well as the YouTube video stream, we used every channel at our disposal – twitter, LikedIn, Google+, our websites – to stimulate the debate.
Scottish Enterprise CEO Lena Wilson talking at the Commonwealth Games Business Conference
It was a huge effort for a small team. Three of us – including Erica Goodey, who led on this project -were at the event. I was backup and tech support, though thankfully I was not needed for that. Everything went smoothly. Others back at the office pitched in too, publishing updates live on our sites.
So, roughly half our entire available resource tied up for two days.
And there have been months of planning, preparation and practice leading up to these two days.
In all, we estimate our total effort involved in these two days is 124 hours: equivalent to one person working on nothing else for nearly a month. And we’re not even half-way done yet. Much of our planning is around what we do with the material we’ve gathered now the event itself is past.
This was a first for my team, and for Scottish Enterprise/SDI too. We have been a publisher for years, but this was the first time we have been a live broadcaster.
Reading Time: < 1minuteWell 4 quick years have passed and it is again time to procure a wed/digital analytics package. We need an analytics package to measure all our online stuff, in order to be able to manage it. Otherwise we are just guessing.
