In mid-2015, Revenue initiated a project to redesign our website. The project had two main objectives – to reorganise the content in a way that made sense to our customers and to re-write it in plain language. VisibleThread Words Matter - Driving better Citizen Engagement in Irish Government | March 2018

1. The Revenue website
Counting on words

2. Previous website redesign
in
2008

19. Content management
Sheer volume
No review mechanism
No audit trail
Duplication

20. Content management
system
Responsive design

22. Skimming
• A majority of people read about
20% of the words on an average
web page.
• As the number of words on a web
page goes up, the % read goes
down.
• To get people to read half of the
words on a web page it should
contain 110 words or fewer.

24. Find it
Read (skim) it
Understand it
4 – 7 seconds

26. 1in6Irish adults has difficulty
understanding basic written
text

27. Restructure & Rewrite

28. Restructure
How information is organised
and presented:
• on the website
• on individual pages.

29. Ask the customer

30. What you need to know
+ online services
If you want to know more
Two layers

35. Clearing up
not
Dumbing down

37. Writing for the web
guide
Style guide

38. Short (& meaningful) headings
(max 8 words)
Short sentences (max 20 words)
Short paragraphs (max 60 words)
Short pages (max 500 words)
Active voice

39. Rewrite
External editors
Revenue content teams
Subject matter experts

40. Rewriting

42. QA
Experts
Non-experts

43. How do you
measure
‘plain language’?

44. Visible Thread
Docs
Visible Thread
Web

45. Authors
Subject matter experts
Content editors

46. Nudging the content
Google analytics
Feedback

47. Search
Engine
Optimisation

49. … and then we
translated it all
into Irish!

50. Thank you