Empowering Marion County Voters with an
Optimized Digital Experience
How we increased page views
300% by redesigning Vote.Indy.gov
UX Benchmarking Research, IA Strategy, UX/UI Design
For the most recent election cycle, we worked with Marion County Election Board (MCEB) to ensure their Vote.Indy.gov website functioned as a resource hub where voters can stay up-to-date with key dates and helpful voting information. The new site launched just in time for the primary and the results are clear: More Hoosiers found the information they sought faster and kept coming back to this valuable resource.
The redesigned website follows a clear content strategy that prioritizes the most important dates, information, and features for users in an intentional hierarchy on the page—especially on mobile devices.
145% Increase in home page views
The homepage alone saw a 145% increase in views from 2020 and that trend continued across other key pages, leading to an overall 300% increase. Users found this version of the site much more engaging and easy to navigate than past iterations.
58% Engagement Rate
The new Vote.Indy.gov website engaged over half of all people who visited it, meaning users completed actions like reading the content, clicking on a polling location, or calling a phone number.
1M+ Map Interactions
The map of vote centers, with easy-to-use sort, filter, and search features was one of the key tools we focused on. The result is a map that users referred to multiple times as they made their plan to vote.
Client Goals
Increase voter turnout
Improve user experience on the site
Create a voting resource people return to
Solution
Our website redesign addressed the biggest challenges that kept people from finding the information they needed as fast as possible: We put the most important dates and deadlines front and center, reorganized the sections to make information easier to find, and created clear paths for users to take—all while keeping the look and feel of the Indy.gov website. We minimized the amount of scrolling, clicking, and searching users need to do to find the information they want, and did it in a way that’s more accessible than ever.
To achieve all this, we put a lot of thought into the layout and features we included on both desktop and mobile. The “sticky” top-of-the-page navigation follows users as they scroll to keep key pages within reach at all times, while the key dates and deadlines section follow users as they move—with a handy “drawer” function that automatically closes as they progress down the home page.
Reorganizing content helped us create clear paths for users. Placing links to other key pages, or to key sections down the page, along with clear headlines, helped users find what they were looking for and then explore more.
RESEARCH
To begin, we put together a detailed digital audit as well as audience personas. Recognizing that new voters, occasional voters, and regular voters all come to the same place for information, it was important that we consider each of their different needs in our design. We studied user paths on the previous website, looked at other election board websites across states and counties, as well as websites with similar functionality in order to make the best recommendations for the new Vote.Indy.gov. With this research in mind, we pulled together a set of priorities, key functions, and examples to present and discuss with the clerk and the MCEB team.
Strategy & USEr experience
Our strategists and director of UX/UI took the lead on developing a clear structure and function for the new website. These were then turned into a wireframe and set of content outlines.
We considered the content hierarchy alongside the web page hierarchy, knowing that this website would function as a resource and information hub for users with a wide range in familiarity. We determined that the content would need to be clear, concise, with carefully written headlines, and full of the right keywords to help Marion County voters find the information they need.
Web Development
The functionality of the vote center map was at the heart of the development process. We used the research we did in our first stage to create a search and filter function that would be familiar to users and easy to use. Users are able to find the most convenient voting location in the same way they might find a coffee shop close to their workplace. The color coding and other design choices help convey a considerable amount of information about vote centers within the map itself, making it useful enough that we saw voters return to it again and again.
Launch
The opportunity to test the new website with a smaller primary election right before a presidential election was a key part of the timing for the new website. That being said, launching a new website the same year as a major election is not for the faint of heart, and the MCEB and Well Done development teams worked together on testing and updates in the early months of 2024 to ensure the new Vote.Indy.gov would be ready for anything.. The migration to a WordPress CRM meant that the MCEB team could make necessary updates on the fly, a boon when an entire set of must-know dates and deadlines changes over the course of just a few months.
