9 April 2025
Over the last couple of years, we have been improving the Plymouth.gov.uk website making it more accessible, easier to navigate and our information clear and simple to understand.
Our website is often only half the journey. If people need to transact with us then they will usually need to use one of our online forms. These allow people to report issues, apply or request services or to pay for something. We're now applying the principles we used for the website to our online transactions. That is to make sure we are designing for user's needs and forms are accessible, consistent and simple to use.
Feedback
All of our forms ask for feedback once they have been submitted. We ask for:
- A form rating - good, ok or poor
- Was the form easy to find
- How long it took to complete
- Free text box for comments
This gives us a lot of useful information which we can use, alongside other data and analytics, to help us to improve the online experience.
Abandoned vehicles
Report an abandoned vehicle is one of our top 50 online transactions. In 2024 there were 1234 reports.
The form itself was built back in 2016, it's been amended and added to since then, but it was due a redesign.
The problems
We looked at what the form feedback was telling us. 21% of people using the form left feedback offering some useful insight about its usability.
9.3% rated the experience as poor
13.6% said the form was hard to find
I was instructed to provide 3 photos of the vehicles but the 5mb memory would only accept 2.
Form feedback
Service is good but trying to pin point the vehicle is difficult
Form feedback
Many people left comments. This is unstructured, qualitative data which can be difficult to get actionable insight from. One way we can start to make sense of it is to create themes to organise the information. We did this with the feedback from the abandoned vehicles form.
The main problems we identified were:
- The form asks people to upload images of the vehicle, but the form only allowed up to 5MB to be uploaded. This isn't enough, most phone cameras produce images larger than this and we shouldn't expect people to have to resize images we have asked for
- We ask people to let us know the location of the vehicle. Many people struggled to use the map which was difficult to use, especially on mobile devices. The instructions for using the map were too long and caused confusion
- There were issues with the form itself. Questions were unclear, we were asking mandatory questions that should be optional and many signposting links were broken
- The form asked for registration details and provided a link to check the tax status. Users were expected to work out if the vehicle was out of tax by 31 days. Often people skipped this question
- Expectations weren't being met and people were raising multiple cases. There are potentially multiple agencies involved with abandoned vehicles and it was clear signposting didn’t work
We also spoke to the service, to find out what issues they experienced with the form, especially around the back office stages, where staff would react to reports.
What we did
- We have increased the size limit for uploads to 30MB which will allow people to upload images we ask for without having to resize them.
- We added a location finder to the form. This means that users with location services switched on will get a notification asking if they want the form to use their current location. The map is still an option for those who do not want to use this or are at a different location.
- We added signposting to the website, so people get the correct link before they get to the form. Saving users and staff time.
- We fixed the form questions, any broken links, and updated the form to use our current form standards. Email responses were rewritten.
Vehicle enquiry service
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) provide APIs which we can use in forms to pull details from other databases. For the abandoned vehicle form we added the Vehicle Enquiry Service API so that when you search for a registration number it will automatically bring back a number of details. The make and colour of the vehicle is automatically populated and the team can see MOT status and Tax due date. This saves users from having to type all this in, which could sometimes lead to errors and it benefits the staff who get all the information they need upfront.
Back office stage
Working with staff in the service we redesigned the back office stage. This now enables the team to:
- easily keep track of vehicles that we needed to inspect
- receive reminders when a notice expires allowing us to remove the abandoned vehicle
- give better and more accurate updates to users around what action we were taking and any outcomes from 7 and 15 day notices
- spend less time checking the status of cases
- give managers a clearer view of outstanding reports
Website
We know that most people start a transaction on the website. Abandoned vehicles currently sits in the street care and cleaning section. As this section hadn't been looked at as part of the website project, we needed to redesign the content alongside the form changes. Historically, these have been worked on separately, leading to a sometimes disjointed user experience. We now treat the website and forms as a single user journey.
The abandoned vehicle page also has a form for reporting caravans, trailers or boats that are not attached to a vehicle. Ideally we would have one start page for a transaction, and this is something we will be looking at in the future.
Until recently, abandoned vehicles came below reporting caravans on the page. As the more popular form we moved abandoned vehicles to the top and added some signposting, along with what is needed to complete the form and what happens next. Keywords have been added to the page to make it easier to find.
We will be monitoring both website and form feedback for any comments from users and will be checking in with the team to see how the changes have affected their work.