VDACS Website Redesign

Business Case

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) promotes the economic growth and development of Virginia agriculture, provides consumer protection and encourages environmental stewardship.
The agency is headquartered in Richmond and has several field offices, four regional diagnostic animal health laboratories and a global network of representatives promoting Virginia products internationally.
It is the Agency’s vision to be a nationally and internationally recognized agricultural development, marketing, consumer protection, animal health, and environmental organization that achieves world class customer service, innovation, and results for Virginia agriculture and agribusiness industry, consumers and citizens of the Commonwealth.
Recognizing continuing demand for streamlined services and new ways in which constituents wish to interact with the Agency, VDACS embarked on an effort to revitalize its vast website with the goals of increasing outreach and effectiveness by focusing on five key objectives:

1. Be visually compelling
2. Make the site 100% accessible
3. Implement responsive design for the Mobile marketplace
4. Simplify with reorganized citizen friendly and industry specific navigation
5. Showcase key services and special items

Solution

VDACS teamed with Virginia Interactive (VI) to design, develop, and host the new website with special consideration for three primary user groups including farmers, businesses, and citizens. With best practices and lessons learned from leading state agency and agricultural websites across the country, VI worked closely with the agency to develop responsive webpage templates and styles that were then used to build out, organize, and present the agency’s content and services.  

Tools

• Dreamweaver HTML editor
• Google Search
• Google Analytics
• HiSoftware AccVerify accessibility testing and validation
• Uses SFTP (File Transfer Protocol) for content and data updates
• Linux environment hosted in a secure tier 4 data center with redundant co-location and failover

Results

• Launched December 6th, 2015, the new site boasts an attractive design with Virginia specific imagery, a mobile friendly design, and a simplified and intuitive navigational architecture.
• The new design quickly highlights featured services and organizes content tailored to the Agency’s three primary user groups; farmers, businesses, and citizens.
• Meets compliance standards including Level-A Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), COV ITRM Standard SEC 501-01 and COV ITRM Guideline SEC 507-00.
• The Agency has received seven awards to date for creative design as well as structure and navigation.

Awards