Social > The making of beta.bom.gov.au

The making of beta.bom.gov.au

How user research and testing helped us to build a new website for all Australians.

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Millions of Australians use bom.gov.au every day to make decisions about their lives and their livelihoods. Website traffic can increase to nearly 6 million visits a day when Australia is experiencing severe weather. Before we started on the redesign, it was important to understand how the website is used and what people wanted to see more and less of.

Video: Watch this short video for an overview of user research feedback and new features (1 minute 4 seconds).

What did Australia ask for?

User testing and research told us Australians want more control over weather information important to them.

People who took part in testing wanted to customise their frequently viewed weather locations – similar to the BOM Weather app experience. They wanted to be able to choose between at-a-glance information and detailed data, and they wanted to find everything more easily than the current website.

Graphic: Improved navigation and new functionality on location pages.

Key features

The interactive Rain radar and weather maps and Manage favourite locations were two of the outcomes from our user testing and design research.

Rain radar and weather maps

Our new interactive rain radar and weather maps allow the user to pan, scroll and zoom while choosing between past information or forecasts. Click 'More weather' to choose between wind, rain or temperature maps and adjust the map settings to see cities and towns, coastlines, rivers and lakes or road and rail.

Graphic: Customise your map experience by clicking 'More weather' on the weather map.

Manage favourite locations

The new Manage favourite locations feature allows the user to quickly find the weather for locations important to them; favourite holiday destinations, where friends and family live, plus work and home.

Users can also choose to customise the home page by setting it to display the weather of a favourite location as their 'home page', and to choose if they want the rain radar map to be always visible, or visible only when rain is predicted.

Graphic: Manage your favourite locations from any page.

The Website help page has additional information about new functionality, browser compatibility and troubleshooting.

We're still building the test website, so not all warnings, data and content are available yet. Always check bom.gov.au or the BOM Weather app for the latest warnings.

We're encouraging everyone to explore the test website, try out some of the new features and submit feedback so that we can deliver the best site possible.

What's next?

Our website has more than 72,000 unique pages. We are starting with the most-visited pages and content, and we will gradually be adding more specialist content to the test website. Learn about updates at About our test website or by following us on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.

To get it right, we're taking the time to seek feedback and ensure our test website meets the needs and expectations of those who rely on it every day.