We recently redesigned the exports and international markets section of the Scottish Enterprise website. ## Our goals * **Raise awareness of our exporting expertise and support** – in order to help more businesses, we needed them to be aware of what support they can access through us * **Create content that is relevant and useful to exporters and potential exporters** – we wanted to ensure that content on our website was meeting user needs * **Get more enquiries for exporting services and events** – we wanted to get more people asking us about the services and events that we offer * **Help users self-serve** – we wanted to help people self-serve where possible, or signpost them to other help and support, at the right point in the customer journey * **Get more users taking advantage of market opportunities** – we wanted to help businesses understand what opportunities exist in overseas markets and how they can access them ## Who we worked with The project team included: * A project manager * Exporting experts from our trade services team * A service designer * A UX designer * A user researcher * A content designer * An SEO/analytics specialist ## What we did ### Start with user needs The Department of International Trade (DIT) had done a lot of research into the user needs of exporters and had shared their findings with us. This was great – but there was one problem. There were hundreds of needs. We spent some time streamlining the used needs and categorised them by theme: * **Motivation**(Why I want to export) ​ * **Information and resources**(I need information and resources to do x) ​ * **Skills**(I need to ensure I have the skills to do x) ​ * **Logistics**(I need to move stuff and people) ​ * **Compliance**(I need to comply with the law) ​ * **Risk management** (I want to know what to do if something goes wrong) ​ * **Opportunities**(I want to find new opportunities to do x) We then moved on to mapping these needs against the support/services that we and our partners offer to help us understand where we were meeting the needs and where the gaps were. ### Do user research We did a mixture of unmoderated online testing and one-to-one video testing with companies, where we validated the user needs to make sure they were still relevant in the Brexit/Covid-19 climate. Here’s what we learned: * Technical information around exporting is a high priority for users, especially around logistics/moving goods and customs, because of Brexit * The needs of users are different depending on the stage they’re at in their exporting journey ### Create company personas We created some high-level company personas based upon our research, which helped us understand the needs and barriers that companies face at different stages. ### Test how we’re structuring our web content We did several card-sorting exercises, where we started off by asking users to group our existing exporting content into categories that made sense to them to understand if the current site structure was working well. The results showed that it wasn’t. So we grouped the results into themes, which gave us five sections. We then ran a follow-up closed card sort to validate these five sections and check that users were easily able to sort the content using these new sections. ### Do a content review Once we were confident that we had a site structure that would work for our customers, we did a full content audit of all the exporting content. We matched all the content to the user needs that it met, which helped us see where the gaps were and where existing content needed to be improved. ### Do an SEO review Our SEO expert identified a number of exporting pages that could be ranking better if we made simple changes to what we called them, which would help us meet our goals of raising awareness of our exporting expertise and getting more enquiries. ### Benchmark and set targets We created a suite of measurable KPIs that relate to our five goals and could help us to gauge how any changes made perform against objectives. We benchmarked how the existing content performed in the first six months of 2020 and set targets to better those results. We created a real-time dashboard to allow us to track performance. ## What we changed The old exporting section looked like this: And this is our new exporting section: The big changes that we made are: * Allowing users to select whether they are a new or existing exporter when the land of the page, and showing them different content and services based upon where they are in their exporting journey * Creating a new ‘Delivery and documentation‘ section, which has information on the technical side of exporting, since we know that this is an area that many businesses struggle with * Putting all of our training programmes and events together in one section, so it’s clear what support services we offer and how to access them * Adding a new ‘Market opportunities‘ section, which includes information on the scale and scope of each opportunity and the types of companies that are eligible * Changing what we call things based upon our SEO research and the language that our customers use ## The results * The new exporting and international markets section met or exceeded 65% of all targets in the first three months * There was a 42% rise in total website sessions for exporting content compared to the previous three months, despite an 11% seasonal dip for Scottish Enterprise website sessions in the same period * The bounce rate for organic visits to exporting content is down 22% on the previous year to 26% (the SE site average for the same period was 41%), showing that content is resonating well with users * There has been a positive uplift in exporting search term rankings on Google UK, including ‘international ecommerce’ and ‘how to start exporting’ * The new ‘Market opportunities’ section has generated 14 enquiries so far You can view the full report on the first three months. ## What we’re doing next * We’ll continue to explore how to attract new users to the site and work with the marketing team to ensure any promotional activity meets the right audience * We’ll review the internal linking to our more detailed business guides from the exporting section, since they aren’t getting as many views and as much engagement as we’d like * We’ll check with the trade specialists to see if the quality of enquiries has improved since we updated the section – and if not, we’ll investigate what we need to do to change that Katie Dickerson + postsBio Formerly a service designer with Scottish Enterprise. * Katie Dickerson __10 things that businesses consistently tell us * Katie Dickerson __When users tell you that you’re focusing on the wrong thing – listen to them * Katie Dickerson __How providing tech support helped me understand our customers better * Katie Dickerson __What businesses think about Fair Work and Net Zero ## Possibly related * The exporting experience: one year on * Good services scale * Accessibility - Sharing knowledge between organisations * Card sorting to improve information architecture

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Home » Toolbox » Safelinks original URL decoder A little app that takes the mangled URLs generated by Microsoft 365’s Safelinks link checking service and decodes them to recover the original target. Just pop the Safelinks redirect URL in this widget and press enter or click the button. Then copy the retrieved URL and use it wherever you need it. Outlook Safelinks URL Decode Safelinks URL Original URL Copy original URL Reset ## What data do we store? None. Any URL you paste here is dealt with entirely in your browser. No data is sent to our server, or to analytics. We don’t know what you do when you’re here. You can view the javascript that does this below. ## Why create this? We use Microsoft 365, so links in all the emails we receive are passed through a link-checking service called Safelinks to check that the endpoint is not malicious. Which is great, but … In the process, link URLs are transformed into something like this: > http://safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdesign.scotentblog.co.uk%2Fsafelinks-original-url-decoder&data=05%7C01%7Cxxxxx.xxxxxx%40scotent.co.uk%7C014af0a3586b4b6935e608da39ca8a1c%7C50374495fdde4d04bc5c574982680e19%7C0%7C0%7C637885839322117164%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oQY%2BD%2FHdElO%2BsWIKPxSh%2FCZhqVnOlqnemz9ocQlkDGY%3D&reserved=0 Content authors are often under great time pressure to publish, and will simply copy links from an email to publish on the web. This can be problematic, because: * Safelinks redirects may not work for everyone * The URLs are too long for some older browsers to handle * They are not human-readable, so hide the ultimate destination * They mess with analytics data * They are served over http, not https, so * potentially vulnerable to interception * could harm search ranking if we have too many links to insecure resources * If you look closely, there’s an email address in there (I’ve changed it to xxxxx.xxxxxx@ in the example) which is going to be available for anyone on the web to harvest So, on the web, it’s best to decode Safelinks URLs and use the original target for your hrefs instead. ## Code The `copyToClipboard()` function is called by an `onClick` event in the button. let btn = document.getElementById("btn"); let str = ""; btn.addEventListener("click", function (event) { event.preventDefault(); str = document.getElementById("input").value; var start, end; start = str.indexOf("=") + 1; end = str.indexOf("&"); let url = str.slice(start, end); url = decodeURIComponent(url); document.getElementById("output").value = url; document.getElementById("result").setAttribute("style", "display: block;"); }); function copyToClipboard() { event.preventDefault(); var text = document.getElementById("output").value; navigator.clipboard.writeText(text).then( function () { alert("Link has been copied"); }, function (err) { alert( "Looks like your browser does not support copying to the clipboard. Select and copy the text manually." ); } ); } Code language: JavaScript (javascript) David O'Brien Website | + postsBio I'm a service designer in Scottish Enterprise's unsurprisingly-named service design team. I've been a content designer, editor, UX designer and giant haystacks developer on the web for (gulp) over 25 years. * David O'Brien __What’s in a name? * David O'Brien __Why people use subtitles and captioning * David O'Brien __How to create a user story map with a Miro table * David O'Brien __Would you hire Sam? ## Possibly related * How this site is performing * 2025 performance data * Good services scale * Alt text decide-o-matic

Home » Toolbox » Alt text decide-o-matic Writing alternate text for non-text content can be hard. This widget can help you decide which approach to take. Alt text decide-o-matic This application requires javascript. Please make sure javascript is enabled in your browser’s settings. About this This decision tree will help you understand how best to include text alternatives for image-based content. It is based on the W3C’s alt text decision tree. All errors are mine. Give feedback, tell me what’s broken, by leaving a comment here, or via Mastodon. Start now Does the image contain text? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the text also present as real text nearby? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the text only shown for visual effects? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Does the text have a specific function, for example as an icon? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the text in the image not present otherwise? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the image used in a link or a button, and would it be hard or impossible to understand what the link or the button does, if the image wasn’t there? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Does the image contribute meaning to the current page or context? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the image a simple graphic or photograph? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the image a a graph or complex piece of information? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Does the image show content that is redundant to real text nearby? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next Is the image purely decorative or not intended for the user? Yes No Next Please select either Yes or No, then click Next ## Use alt=”” Use an empty alt attribute. See Decorative Images. Start over ## Communicate the function Use the alt attribute to communicate the function of the image. See Functional Images. Start over ## Include the text Use the alt attribute to include the text of the image. See Images of Text. Start over ## Communicate the destination of the link Use the alt attribute to communicate the destination of the link or action taken. See Functional Images. Start over ## Briefly describe the image Use a brief description of the image in a way that conveys that meaning in the alt attribute. See Informative Images. Start over ## Include the information elsewhere Include the information contained in the image elsewhere on the page. See Complex Images. Start over ## Use alt=”” Use an empty alt attribute. See (redundant) Functional Images. Start over David O'Brien Website | + postsBio I'm a service designer in Scottish Enterprise's unsurprisingly-named service design team. I've been a content designer, editor, UX designer and giant haystacks developer on the web for (gulp) over 25 years. * David O'Brien __What’s in a name? * David O'Brien __Why people use subtitles and captioning * David O'Brien __How to create a user story map with a Miro table * David O'Brien __Would you hire Sam? ## Possibly related * How this site is performing * 2025 performance data * How to create accessible Word documents * Good services scale

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to explain complicated things in writing, and how to help people actually understand them. Two people have inspired that reflection: Ylva Bjelle and Randall Munroe. They come from very different backgrounds, but both emphasize that writing too often relies on overly technical or specialized vocabulary. I first...

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