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USAGov is committed to providing an excellent omnichannel customer experience (CX) for users. One way we do this is by using the content on our websites to power the USAGov Contact Center’s knowledge base. This allows our contact center agents and website visitors to read and rely on the same information to find answers to questions about government benefits and services. 

Once USAGov launched beta.USA.gov and beta.USA.gov en Español, the outreach team had to market the new websites to the public. After years of connecting people to government information through social media, email marketing, featured content, and events, we used that expertise to get more eyes and action on the beta sites and encourage users to share their feedback. 

But what was different about the beta outreach campaign? Here are the three main ways the team changed their approach for this new and exciting opportunity:

In October, we released beta.USA.gov and beta.USA.gov en Español to the public. These websites are where we are building the next version of USA.gov. We want the future federal front door to be more human-centered, actionable, interactive, and accessible. But how do we know if the choices we have made are accomplishing these goals? 

In order to measure the effectiveness of our previous choices and to guide future decisions, we’re evaluating beta.USA.gov in a variety of ways.

USA.gov and USAGov en Español have always taken a human-centered approach to making it easier to find and understand government information and services. As part of the larger effort to reimagine the USAGov websites, our content team developed new data-driven processes and best practices that reshape how we present content for beta.USA.gov and beta.USA.gov en Español. 

The USAGov team strives to ensure all our websites are accessible to as many people as possible. This includes those who need the use of specialized assistive technologies when browsing the internet. As a result, in building beta.USA.gov we deliberately validated that it met Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 compliance requirements. 

This mindset wasn't only applied to the testing phase of beta but in all phases of the project including prototyping. Our testing approach includes a three step hybrid method that may be suitable for other agency use.