Creating a clearer web strategy for the official police security initiative

Secured by Design is the official police security initiative focussed on improving the security of buildings, products and places through crime prevention guidance and standards.

As a crucial part of this initiative, the website must serve several different audiences. These include members of the public looking for practical advice. There are also professionals such as architects, planners, builders and developers, who need access to resources, directories, and product searches. Finally, there are police users who need guidance, training information, and content they can share with victims of crime.

The site must help users find the right information quickly, understand what Secured by Design really means, and navigate through detailed content, without needing any prior knowledge or experience.

First Option Software was brought in by Inform Advertising to help lead the discovery and UX design for a clearer, more user-friendly, audience-led website. Working in collaboration with Inform Advertising, Secured by Design, and the future implementation partner, SoftForge Ltd, the project combined strategy, design, technical planning, and delivery planning from the very beginning.

The work included stakeholder workshops, user journey thinking, website architecture, reusable templates, and implementation guidance. The aim was to frame the website as an interface, rather than a shop window, guiding users towards their goals simply and quickly.

The previous Secured by Design website contained a wealth of useful information and content, but it was difficult for different users to find and understand. If the information couldn’t be easily understood, it wouldn’t be acted on, and so fixing this was critical.

One key element was understanding the target audience. Secured by Design caters to many users, from the public to the police, professionals, existing members, and planners and developers. Serving them all in the same way would only serve to make the site too complex.

The initial workshop unearthed four priority audiences:

• Public
• Professionals
• Members
• Police

Each group had different requirements. The public needed better awareness and guidance. Professionals needed quick access to resources, product searches and directories. Members needed services, content, and a clear idea of value. The police needed to easily direct members of the public to resources for crime prevention.

There were also issues navigating the site, unearthed through user session recordings. This meant people were not always finding what they were looking for. 

The challenge was more than just a design refresh; it was to create a flexible, structured website that was both easy to navigate and more useful.

Secured by Design needed a web strategy that could:

• Clarify the site’s core audiences
• Reduce reliance on assumed knowledge 
• Improve member and product searches
• Support both search-led and browse-led users
• Use clearer categories and filters
• Create reusable templates for repeated content types
• Consolidate articles, news and guidance
• Give the technical team clear design and theme guidance

The project needed to create a roadmap for the new website, giving the Secured by Design team the tools they needed to implement a better, clearer structure and provide a more informative and seamless experience to its users.

First Option Software began the project through discovery, user journey design, and prototyping. The work began by gaining a deep understanding of who the users were, and what they needed to do. Through workshops and discovery sessions, First Option helped Secured by Design think through key tasks such as finding a member, a product, a guide, or reading and understanding security advice and accreditation. 

This created a key foundation for the redesign, and informed the new navigation, page hierarchy and site architecture, content templates, search, filters, and CTAs. These were now being tested and judged against real user needs, rather than just on internal assumptions. All of this needed to align with technical needs, ensuring any proposed changes could be implemented within the existing system.

One of the key elements is a clearer structure based on the audiences using the website. Secured by Design caters to the public, professionals, members, and police users, and each group has a different level of knowledge, and a different goal.

The project focussed on reducing assumed knowledge, explaining more, framing content better, and making accreditation easier to understand.

First Option helped rethink how users browsed and navigated the site. For member search, clearer links, categories and visual cues were implemented, with richer results. For resources, the previously rigid categories were replaced with clearer signposting and breadcrumbs, allowing users to move freely through the site without having to restart journeys.

For product search, the key was to add more context. Product names alone were not enough, so listings now include summaries, key attributes, and related information to help users compare and understand what they were seeing.

With a template-based approach for member profiles, product listings, articles, and guidance, Secured by Design now has more consistency, providing a better, simpler browsing experience. News and blog content were also combined into a clearer and more intuitive article structure, aided by audience tagging, filtering and clear navigation.

Rather than just a generic strategy document, the deliverable needed to be both practical and actionable. With interactive prototypes, stakeholders could click through pages and understand the realities of the site. The prototypes also gave the technical team necessary guidance on layout, typography, colours, components, and reusable modules. This provided Secured by Design with a structured basis for the build.