Today we’ve released a new improved version of co-operative.coop. Previously, if you went to coop.co.uk or co-operative.coop you would see exactly the same content. Not anymore. They’re now 2 separate websites, each supporting different needs.
We’ve split up the content so that:
- coop.co.uk is the way to access our products and services
- co-operative.coop is the way you can find out how our co-operative is working and how you can get involved with it
Fixing the basics
The new co-operative.coop fixes a lot of the basics. The new site is:
- responsive – it works well on mobile, tablets and laptops
- fast – it takes less than a second to load a page compared with 6.5 seconds on the old site
- secure – it uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) when loading a web page which means that when you use some web browsers you see a green padlock
This is important because next month the Chrome web browser will highlight non HTTPS sites as not being secure.
The content’s better too
All the changes above are the features you’d expect on any modern website. Like we said, they’re the basics. The biggest change we’ve made is the content. It’s very easy to create a lot of content but it’s much harder work to create good, concise content. For this reason we’ve removed hundreds of pages so that the content meets the needs of the people using the site.
We’re not finished
Changing to co-operative.coop is just the start. The improvements will be ongoing. Previously an external company looked after the site for us which meant only occasional changes.
Our new site was built by our in-house team. They work in an agile way. We ask for feedback at the bottom of each page which means the team is continually listening to our members and anyone else using the site.
Doing things ourselves and working in this way means we can iterate quickly, and often. Making it better every time we make a change.
We’ve worked with our Group Secretariat, consulted our Members’ Council and have shown the new site to the Digital Working Group on several occasions. Thank you to all.
Thanks also to Peter Brumby and all the team who’ve made this happen.
We’re going to continue to work together to improve the new site for our members.
Mike Bracken
Chief Digital Officer
Nick Crofts
President of National Members’ Council