A proactive approach to website management

The City of Stirling is one of the largest local governments in Western Australia, serving a population of over 243,000 residents. Danielle, the Digital Coordinator, and Rebecca, the Digital Content Officer, form part of a small but impactful digital team responsible for maintaining and improving the City’s website. With a recent website overhaul completed, their focus has shifted to post-launch optimization, ensuring the site meets accessibility standards and delivers an exceptional user experience.

Before using Silktide, the team relied on intuition and manual efforts when making decisions about site structure and content placement. Today, Silktide provides them with the insights and tools needed to make informed, data-backed decisions that save time and deliver measurable improvements.

Accessibility as the driving force

When the City of Stirling first adopted Silktide, their primary goal was to improve accessibility. Ensuring their website complies with WCAG standards was both a legal requirement and a way to deliver better service to their diverse audience.

“Silktide was chosen as our accessibility tool, but it quickly became clear that it could do so much more. It’s helped us optimize our site beyond compliance and improve the user experience,” said Danielle.

Silktide was chosen as our accessibility tool, but it quickly became clear that it could do so much more. It’s helped us optimize our site beyond compliance and improve the user experience.

Danielle Hogarth

City of Stirling

Data-driven decisions and scroll maps

One of the most valuable features for the team has been Silktide’s analytics and heatmaps. With the launch of their new site, Danielle and Rebecca were able to use scroll maps to demonstrate how visitors interact with their content.

“Using heatmaps and scroll maps gave us hard evidence to back our decisions. For example, we merged pages and restructured content to make it more scrollable and easier to navigate,” Rebecca explained.

Convincing internal stakeholders to embrace changes wasn’t always easy, but the visual data Silktide provided helped overcome objections.

“The heatmaps showed us people were scrolling down and using anchor links. It was a powerful way to show teams that our decisions were driven by actual user behavior, not guesswork.”

Time savings and efficiency gains

Silktide has also delivered significant time savings for the team. Automated checks for broken links, spelling errors, and accessibility issues allow them to maintain high content quality without manual effort.

“Previously, checking for issues like broken links or correct heading structure was a manual process, and things were easily missed. Silktide automates this for us and helps us spot issues we wouldn’t have noticed otherwise,” Rebecca shared.

A user-friendly interface

Danielle and Rebecca highlighted how easy it is to navigate Silktide and access the insights they need.

“Silktide’s interface is much easier to use compared to other tools we’ve tried. At my previous role, we used Monsido, but Silktide is far more intuitive,” said Rebecca.

A tool for continuous improvement

Looking ahead, the City of Stirling plans to use Silktide to maintain accessibility and continually optimize their new website. Their long-term goals include ensuring the site remains compliant, up-to-date, and aligned with the needs of their residents.

You can’t fix what you can’t see, and Silktide gives us that visibility. It’s like a superpower—it helps us find and fix the hidden issues that we’d otherwise miss

Danielle Hogarth

City of Stirling

Results

  • Improved accessibility: Ensured WCAG compliance for their updated website.
  • Data-driven changes: Used scroll maps and analytics to optimize site structure and content placement.
  • Significant time savings: Automated checks reduced manual effort for accessibility and quality assurance.
  • Better stakeholder buy-in: Visual data from Silktide helped convince internal teams to embrace changes.

For the City of Stirling, Silktide has been instrumental in streamlining workflows, enhancing accessibility, and enabling smarter decision-making. The team can now manage their website with confidence, knowing they have the tools to maintain quality and compliance while continuously improving the user experience.

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