ERC webteam

Following on from my post back in September, I am glad to update that we have put measures in place to ensure there is a consistent writing style across our website.

Each department is responsible for updating the content on their web pages – we have over 50 members of staff who add content to the site. Clearly each person will have developed their own writing style over the years; to help us reach a consistent standard, staff have attended a web writing course.

We are now in the process of reviewing our website content with the purpose of improving the readability of our pages. We want you to get the information you need from our site quickly and easily.

If you see a page that needs attention don’t hesitate to let us know, get in touch by emailing the Web Team.

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HTML and CSS course

I recently presented a days training course in XHTML + CSS. I was asked to cascade skills with others in the department who are not from a web based background. It was a fairly simple introduction to the topics, as I only had a day to get across the basics, however I did ask those attending to look at the tutorials on the w3schools site before hand.

The morning session consisted of a brief walk through the fundamentals of XHTML and using it to structure the page, navigation links and the importance of the semantic web.

The afternoon session was then taking the rough and ready pages we’d constructed and making them look more attractive across more than one browser. This was particularly interesting as two of the attendees were graphic designers.

I tried to impart as much as I could, but as you can imagine it’s rather hard to share 15+ yrs experience in one day. However, I’ve very pleased to say the feedback was positive and the attendees all seemed to be much clearer on the issues involved when constructing web pages.

The main goal for me was to make sure people attending all saw the importance of web standards, validation and well formed code. But also that they understood the power and potential of CSS and XHTML, through examples from the likes of css zen garden, a list apart and css play.

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It’s important to keep up to date with products that have been recalled by manufacturers. To ensure residents are fully informed we have integrated this facility to our website.

Here’s how you do it:
1) From our homepage select the Customise home page button, it’s located at the top right of your screen.
2) Check the “Trading Standards” box and select “Save”.
3) Once our page reloads a box will appear named “Trading Standards – Product Recalls” which will enable you to view the products that have been recalled.

Select each product for a full description of the notice that is issued by the retailer!

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If you are looking for things to do during the school holiday’s then check out our summer activities guide.

We are offering a wide range of activities taking place all over East Renfrewshire so there is sure to be something to keep you busy.

Here’s how you do it:

1.    From our homepage select the Customise home page button, it’s located at the top right of your screen.
2.    Check the “Summer Activities” box and select “Save”.
3.    Once our page reloads a box will appear which will enable you to search all the events that are taking place throughout the summer.

Our website will save your preferences so you won’t have to do this each time!

For further information and updates check out the Summer Activities homepage.

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A brand new site for the Dams to Darnley Country Park went live this week.

It was built in a different Content Management System to our normal product but the team who have added the content found it very easy to use.

The site contains a variety of information about the Country Park, how to get there and activities to do once you arrive. There are sections about the wildlife you can find, the history of the Country Park and the countryside rangers who work there.  The site also allows visitors to send in a wildlife sighting; lists forthcoming events and displays a gallery of images of the Country Park.

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We have created the facility for you to save our pages as your favourites or bookmarks on sites such as Delicious, Facebook and StumbleUpon. We realise that not everyone is familiar with these websites, so why not read our article which explains what these sites are in more detail? Just look at the bottom of any of our pages and you will see the details listed under the heading Social Bookmarks.

As mentioned in a previous post on this blog, it’s important to offer our website users choices when searching for information. For example, we offer the use of Navigation, A-Z, Search and a Site Map.

We have also introduced a new section titled ‘I am interested in’, where we have gathered pages together based on subjects relevant to a specific category. The categories are outlined below, and will make finding information a lot easier and faster.

• Residential
• Business
• Council
• Parenting
• Life
• Older People
• Disability

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We carried out testing before we re-developed the website, and we felt that it would be best practice to carry out further testing to ensure that we are getting it right.

We had a session at Clarkston and Mearns Libraries, and around 15 members of the public participated in the sessions.

It was a really interesting two days and the feedback we got was invaluable. I think these sessions demonstrate how close you can become to the product that you are developing and sometimes you can’t see what really needs to change.

With the help of our users we have since made changes to the navigation headings, changed the name of pages to make them more user-friendly, improved page layouts and changed routes through to various pieces of information.

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Writing content for websites is a skill; it’s totally different from writing for a printed publication or any other medium. It’s important that you get the length of your page just right.

Users of websites tend to scan pages rather than reading word for word. Therefore it’s important to keep the page simple and use bullet points and other techniques to draw attention to important details.

With this in mind, the web team attended a ‘Writing for the web’ course which was extremely useful and will help us improve the readability of the website. The ownership of our website content is devolved out to our departments and we will ensure that attending this course is a pre-requisite for staff who will be adding webpage content.

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It’s been 3 months since the launch of the website and we are already looking at ways of improving it further. We are working on customisation, as we want to offer our users the ability to choose content that they are interested in. We also want them to be able to choose where the information is displayed on the homepage. For example, if viewing the latest news is really important to you, we will create the facility for you to drag the latest news box to the top right of the page, save your preferences and the website will remember your changes next time you log on.

The feedback we have received about the new website has been positive. There was a period shortly after the launch when there was some discontent, but that was mainly due to pages not being in the same place as the old website and is to be expected.

You can draw a parallel with supermarkets - when they move their products to another aisle you are disappointed when the bread is not where you expect it to be. However, after a few weeks you get used to where the bread is located - and it’s the same with websites! We didn’t move the pages around to cause confusion and frustration – our changes were based on user opinion and consultation and after a few weeks the feedback suggests it was the right thing to do.

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OK, so we needed to redevelop the site – where do we start? Well, with the usability report hot off the press it was time to pore over the recommendations. There were many issues, but the main focus was the structure of the site. It was clear that our navigation was too cumbersome.

During this period we heard about a new initiative to standardise council websites across Scotland. The idea behind the initiative was that all councils could share a common navigation structure – the Scottish Navigation List (SNL). This would provide a consistent approach for users of local authority websites.

It sounded like a real efficiency; many of us have developed large scale websites before, and we knew that creating a bespoke navigation structure would be significant. Implementing the SNL would free up time and allow us to concentrate on other development work.

We also decided to commission a fresh web design based on the usability recommendations. This was not just to make the website look better - although that was important – but the main objective was to help the user move around the site better.

Part of the testing involved recording users interacting with our website. It was really interesting to watch the DVD as we recorded the different approaches people take when engaging with websites. Many people used our navigation; others went straight to the search engine and our A-Z. What we found alarming was that the users had very little patience - if they didn’t find what they were looking for within 15 seconds or so they quickly jumped from the navigation to the search to the A-Z and if they were still unsuccessful in finding their page, they just gave up.

When reflecting on this, we realised that we do exactly the same thing! This highlighted the importance of offering various routes through to information such as our A - Z, Site Map and FAQs.

Historically, web professionals spent time thinking about ways to keep users on their websites. Now there is a shift of emphasis, where we strive to satisfy and answer the users query as quickly as possible. If we do that well, and the user leaves the website immediately after, we shouldn’t look on this negatively. It should be viewed as a successful interaction – that’s what we are trying to achieve.

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