Creating user-focused content for the Financial Ombudsman Service

The challenge

The Ombudsman’s existing website had been completely redesigned and rebuilt, using new technology. As part of this, the Ombudsman wanted to update and refresh its online content. Two new microsites were also being created as a result of the extensions to the Ombudsman’s remit – and each microsite required new content.

This was an ambitious project, working with a lot of specialised and technical content, to hard delivery deadlines.

Scroll’s content design team was brought in to work in partnership with subject matter experts and communications teams at the Ombudsman. To deliver on time, it was critical to get the partnership right, so that teams could work together smoothly.

What they say about working with Scroll

“The team from Scroll were a real pleasure to work with. They helped us quickly organise the work we needed to do and were able to be flexible in terms of timings and ways of working.

They’ve helped us build a body of content which is accessible and easy to digest – as well as providing valuable, constructive guidance and challenge on both content and design.”

Financial Ombudsman Service

The solution

Scroll supplied a team of content designers and 2 content leads to scope and deliver the work.

The Ombudsman had completed a research and discovery phase, including mapping content to user needs for the new site. Scroll worked with the Ombudsman to refine this, prioritising user needs and task-focused content, and making sure we’d get the right content to the right audience. Agreeing user needs before we wrote content helped to move the project along quickly.

To meet the deadlines, we needed to build trust and a positive working relationship with the Ombudsman’s teams. The Scroll team worked hard to engage with subject matter experts. In a series of meetings, we gave an overview of the principles of effective web content and explained our processes – particularly around fact-checking.

We then wrote and structured each page to meet clear user needs. Scroll writers use plain English as standard, and are experts in designing content that’s easy to read but doesn’t over-simplify.

Scroll ran this project with a remote team of content designers. Most of the Scroll team worked flexibly, going to the Ombudsman’s offices when required and using online technology for meetings. Scroll is fully accustomed to this way of working, and can successfully deliver large and complicated projects using remote teams.

We managed each page through a quality assurance process, including a factcheck by subject matter experts. This often meant making a case for clarity and consistency for the user, relying on the shared understanding we’d built earlier in the project.

We also uploaded content to the newly created CMS, advising the technical team on web page templates.