LDA
Integral role of website to Land Development Agency’s brand and service delivery
The LDA (Land Development Agency) is a commercial State-sponsored body that coordinates land within public control to provide affordable and social homes, and to build communities across the nation. It plays an important role in the delivery of Government’s housing policy.
Communicraft has been working with the LDA since 2020 and has led a number of strategic digital projects including the website redesign, addition of the LDA Cost Rental scheme application process and the integration of a dynamic mapping tool from the ESRI. Each of these projects reflect how important the LDA website is in building brand awareness among the public and in delivering the LDA’s products & services.
UX: The Key Driver for Successful Service Delivery
Communicraft were first tasked with improving the website aesthetic to better align with the new LDA brand and wider audience. This also included optimisation for mobile devices which the site had been serving poorly. Following the drafting and presentation of a report highlighting inconsistencies and usability issues, we implemented a new design, layout and user interface to improve the user experience.
- UX
- Design
- Site Management
- Web Application
- lda.ie
Synergy of Accessibility, Design, and CMS Integration
Under the EU Web Accessibility Directive, public bodies in Ireland must ensure their website and mobile apps are procured, developed and maintained to comply with all relevant parts of the harmonised standard EN 301 549 v 3.2.1 “Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services”. This is broadly equivalent to reaching conformance-rating AA with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1.
To create an inclusive online environment, the website was developed to reach (WCAG) 2.1 level AA compliance. This included a responsive HTML5 framework with semantic markup, alternative text for images, ensuring colour contrast, screen reader testing, keyboard accessibility among many other accessibility features.
The new look and feel reflected the refreshed LDA brand and wider audience. Alongside this work, we ported the site from Wordpress to the enterprise-level CraftCMS platform, which was tailored for content editors, providing them with an efficient and confident content management experience.
The project also included the provision of website maintenance services. This included automated, scheduled website backups, regular software updates and patches, private code repository for all source code, site security updates - SSL, cert etc.
Support for Affordable Purchase, Cost Rental Schemes & Section 53 Submissions
Communicraft also frequently support the LDA during the launch of affordable home schemes run by local authorities. We have also recently launched new features to support a number of regular LDA Cost Rental Scheme launches. Applicants can find all the information on the website and apply online. The UX, design and layout is the result of a detailed requirements gathering phase, iterative wireframes and design phases followed by user testing and refinement prior to launch.
Communicraft also facilitated development of detailed interactive maps that illustrate the location and status of relevant public lands in Ireland. Additionally, we developed a separate web application that streamlines the submission of Section 53 notices to the LDA along with a visual representation of relevant section 53 land submissions.
The site is integrated with our source control and continuous integration / continuous deployment process including the automation of the deployment process with automated test and roll back features.
Other key features are:
- Site is a mobile-first responsive site built with a flexible, light-weight HTML5 framework
- Integrated with several 3rd party service providers - ESRI relevant lands map features, cost rental scheme applications & Section53 land submissions
- Full-featured site caching to optimise page performance and facilitate search indexing.
- Integrated with Cloudflare to enhance site performance during periods of high volume bursts of traffic.
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