Technical Safety BC improves accessibility and streamlines information delivery with a redesigned web experience on Contentstack

As a regulator of different systems and technologies in British Columbia, Technical Safety BC attracts a diverse client group. Visitors may want to get licensed or certified in a specific area, purchase or search for permits, or, as members of the general public, get information on how to have electrical or gas work done within their homes.

The website attracts 7 times more traffic than all other touchpoints put together, and is one of the first points of contact for clients when they are gathering information. Since they had been using a legacy CMS to host their website and mobile experience, Technical Safety BC knew they needed to modernize their content engine to deliver a better site experience. There were multiple areas for improvement, including:

Speed and accessibility: Technical Safety BC’s audiences differ widely in terms of digital knowledge, and have varying access to connectivity. Some rely on satellite connectivity, and others have only sporadic access to mobile or web. The team needed to provide super-fast access on both website and mobile, and a website journey that was easy to navigate so that visitors could complete a specific task. 

Website efficiency: The old website hosted more than 3,000 pages, many of which were orphaned, and most of which had an inconsistent structure and process behind their creation. CMS use was siloed to a single person, making updates and changes dependent on their expertise and availability. With no framework for content, it was too easy for content editors to go rogue, leading to an inconsistent brand voice.

Flexible architecture: In the field of regulation, accuracy is critical, as clients are working on specific time schedules. Codes, standards and documents are changing all the time, and need to be updated quickly in various places around the website. Technical Safety BC knew that the right technology would be an enabler of an easy-to-use design interface, and integrate widely to other systems for ultimate adaptability.

Technical Safety BC performed a thorough discovery of their internal and external requirements, and set core goals around architectural flexibility, design efficiency and accessibility. After researching the different CMS options on the market, their digital partner, 8wire Digital recommended Contentstack’s headless CMS. 

“One of the things we liked about Contentstack was how we could use the platform as a central repository, and then build multi-channel experiences,” Tim Hassed, founder of 8wire Digital, said. “Moving from an aging tech stack to headless technology meant content was immediately responsive and scalable — which was great for us as a lot of the target audience rely on their mobile devices out in the field”

Through an in-depth review process, over seven months the team reduced the number of web pages from 3,000 to under 1,000, a 60% improvement, and re-launched the website giving all pages a structured and intuitive home that makes sense in terms of categorization and user need. As clients often have a very specific ‘job’ in mind when they visit the Technical Safety BC website, for example obtaining a permit or a license, the menu structure needed to guide the user to complete their intended task, and make their journey as seamless as possible. “Optimizing our information architecture, search and navigation was a key part of the website redesign, because many people weren’t able to find what they needed quickly.” Laura Meakings, Business Partner Digital Experience, Technical Safety BC, said. “With the increase in accuracy and speed of our new search capabilities, the UX has really improved. A lot of people come to the website with a really specific purpose in mind, and we’re able to create navigation for their job-to-be-done (JTBD) and help them to self-serve.”

Behind the scenes, the entire website experience on desktop and mobile is now managed by the digital team end-to-end, with a unified look and feel for all content. “The new structure and consistency across the site has enabled our teams to easily find what they need when they are helping clients locate information on our site,” Ian Colvin, Leader of Communications and Digital Experience, Technical Safety BC, said. “The search functionality and the responsiveness are greatly improved, and when changes are required, the Digital Experience team can make those updates quickly and easily, which we could never do with our previous system. This has improved our client relationships, and increased trust [in our content] with the users.”

Next on the roadmap for Technical Safety BC is to create tighter coupling between the client portal and the website, offering e-commerce functionality and deep linking from the website to the portal to streamline the customer journey and add efficiency. There are also a wide range of opportunities available in onboarding other teams into Contentstack, allowing them to leverage the core platform for their own projects, or to create tailored experiences for specific audiences. 

Key wins for Technical Safety BC with Contentstack include:

• Website speed: Performance and accessibility was a foundational goal for Technical Safety BC. The website homepage now loads in one second, 150% faster than average, while mobile page load speed is 1.87 seconds. Key resources such as incident investigation applications load in just 700ms. 
• Customer experience: With an increase of 73% in website traffic, a 60% reduction in overall web pages, and a page performance score of 96, Technical Safety BC feel confident that visitors are finding what they need on the site and that it’s a far more valuable resource than it was on their previous CMS. 
• Digital-ready marketing: With set page types and structures, marketing and communications teams are able to provide website content that is almost immediately digital-ready, without the need for adjustments and changes to keep a unified brand voice and content structure.