Last fall we announced the release of beta.USA.gov and beta.USAGov en Español to the public. After six months, we’re excited to share that those beta sites are now the new USA.gov and USAGov en Español. But we’re not finished. As we hear from users and collaborate with federal agencies, we’ll continue to develop better ways of providing a more seamless government experience for the people we serve. Here are some of the things we’ll be working on in the future:
Collecting and analyzing organic user data and feedback - Now that the new sites are visible to search engines, the visits will be more organic as people find us in search results and discover the original web content we create. This new visibility will help us identify the search terms visitors use to find and search on our sites. Knowing these terms, and hearing from visitors through site feedback and surveys, will help us refine our content and identify any gaps in it. That will make it even more useful to the public, and to USAGov’s contact center agents, who also rely on our websites.
Rolling out and testing interactive features - We plan to build more interactivity on the sites, like our new where to report a scam tool. Another tool we’re currently working on will help people find out if they’re eligible for government benefits.
As we’re creating new interactive features, we’re conducting user testing on existing ones, like our contact your elected officials tool. In testing this feature on our beta sites, most participants (17 out of 18) located the correct elected official they were asked to find. On our previous sites without the tool, just 2 out of 18 participants could locate the correct elected official. Testing also showed that it took people less time to get to the information they needed. The total average time saved compared to the old site was 5.22 minutes (57%) for tests conducted in English and 4:56 (49%) minutes on tests conducted in Spanish.
Exploring cross-agency service completion opportunities - As we continue to build relationships with agencies, we’re working to identify opportunities to streamline federal service delivery through our websites. Our goal is to explore and eventually establish agency partnerships that enable simple cross-agency service completion and a more personalized experience for users.
Piloting accessible voice technology - Our team is in the early stages of designing, building, and deploying a pilot with end-to-end voice skills and actions that meet users’ needs. This pilot will help people get access to government information through voice search, smart speakers, and more.
Thanks for following our “Building Beta” series, highlighting our approach to creating the new USA.gov and USAGov en Español. We’ve enjoyed hearing from agencies about these blog posts, the new versions of our sites, and ideas for ways we can work together. We’d love to hear from you, too! You can get in touch at [email protected].
