Central Bank of Russia considerably changed design of the website

On March 21 the Bank of Russia (Central Bank) started the updated website. Changes concerned appearance and structure: there was a purpose to simplify navigation and to make the website more friendly for users. Besides, the website was adapted for different mobile devices. Earlier it concerned only the homepage and an Internet and reception.

So the homepage of the website of the Central Bank after redesign looks

In 6 years of existence of the old website a lot of things changed – both expectations of users, and the Bank of Russia. To us it was important not simply to update appearance of the website, but also to provide easy access to information for any user – both the professional of financial market, and the ordinary person, the consumer of financial services. It was for this purpose necessary to arrange the huge volume of content and to create a single system of its representation, - Elena Nagaychuk, the associate director of department for public relations of the Central Bank noted

According to her, the current redesign is the beginning of improvements which should happen continuously, and a new design system will allow to implement them much quicker.

And so the homepage looked before changes

The company of service design and digital consulting of "the AIS of Media" (AIC) with which in April, 2019 the contract about 7 million rubles^[1] was signed was engaged in redesign of the website]. In addition to it three more companies applied for the contract: "ADV of Technology", Artikul Production, Saytsoft Company.

The previous redesign of the website of the Central Bank was carried out in 2014. Then these works were performed by Artemy Lebedev's studio.

AIC say that development of design was conducted on the basis of research data – specialists of the company polled audience of the website, about 12 million visitors analyzed ways of transitions, conducted an interview with the staff of the Central Bank and external users, studied the websites of banks, financial institutions and media. About 70% of users of the Central Bank are made by financial institutions, the staff of the Central Bank and consumers of financial services.

The website of the Bank of Russia is a peculiar cloud with a huge number of unique information and documents. In the project for the Central Bank of the Russian Federation our work consisted to a lesser extent in design and in bigger – in design taking into account historically developed backend-features. All volume and logic of providing information should be studied, arranged and optimized. Then it was necessary to create new design, to describe the principles of work with it and to prepare content for migration in the new version, – the design director of AIC Sergey Kireev told.

The menu on the updated website of the Bank of Russia

What specifically changed:

• Content of the website is structured in terms of convenience of the user;
• The system of filters searching on end-to-end pages of the website is implemented, now the website issues only relevant information;
• The organization of sections and subsections is subordinated uniform ̆ to logic. Part of them is enlarged and united in groups, and a part of information, on the contrary, is carried according to different sections;
• The menu is separated into four main groups for simplification of work with a large number of names of sections. Before redesign of the menu represented the list of all existing sections which is not separated into theme groups;
• Made more convenient type of a news feed which includes on one tab all news (events, comments, press releases), and on the second tab of info on updates on the website;
• Pages of all thematic sections contain now the clear description of in what the Bank of Russia is engaged and why it is important with examples, important digits and data. Also there blocks with useful materials for consumers of financial services – links to videos and articles of the educational website "Financial Culture" (fincult.info) appeared.

Notes