Slides from the workshop: 'Managing top tasks'' at Building Perfect Council Websites 11, 14 July 2011 #BPCW11 Speakers: Michele Ide-Smith and Matthew Godfrey

1. Managing top tasks
Michele Ide-Smith, Web Strategy Manager
Matthew Godfrey, User Experience Architect
Cambridgeshire County Council
July 2011
Help! Where do I begin?
You want to take a top task approach
But how do you get started?
How do you find out what customers’ top
tasks are?
And how do you make top tasks easy for
customers to find and use?

2. It’s an iterative process
Step 1 – Analyse data
Google Analytics
unique page views
search terms
Crazy Egg – heat map of user clicks
Transactions (eforms, payments)
Calls to the Contact Centre*
Face to face contacts*
* We’re working on how we map these to web contacts

3. Council staff are not
customers!
So filter out Council traffic
This page was
set as the home
page on all PCs
in Libraries

4. Track impact of marketing
and promotional activities
Annotations in Google Analytics

5. Look at search statistics for
users’ search terms

6. Find out where customers
click (using Crazy Egg or
Google Analytics)

7. Tracking customer journeys
across multiple domains can
be tricky

8. Categorise and log customer
contact consistently across
all contact channels
Contact Centre calls (April) Web top tasks (April)
Contact Centre libraries stats
Categories are too broad How do we map the data? No consistency
between categories!

9. Step 2 – Define top tasks
Find bus timetables
Find or renew library book
Find info on park and ride
Find info on busway
Find info on jobs
Find info on bus routes
Find library opening times/details
Find school term dates
Contact us
Find info on person centred approach
Find school details
Find info on parking tickets
Plan a journey
Find info on ticket types
Find info on registry offices
Find realtime bus information
Pay parking fine
Buy BMD certificates
Apply for school admissions
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
Unique Page Views and Search Terms
Top tasks

10. Step 3 – Evaluate (existing)
Evaluate usability and effectiveness of
the top tasks using different methods
Analyse customer comments / feedback
If you use Google Analytics – set up
goals to track conversion rates
Collect baseline data!
User Experience: Techniques
User Experience: Method Cards
Author: Matthew Godfrey
Published: 25/10/2010
Techniques Overview
Research Analytics
Analytics Task Analysis/Flow
Task Analysis/Flow
Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis Surveys/Questionnaires
Surveys/Questionnaires
Design Card Sort
Card Sort Paper prototyping
Paper prototyping Wireframing
Wireframing Personas
Personas
User Flows/Journey Map
User Flows/Journey Map HTML Prototyping
HTML Prototyping Mock-ups
Mock-ups Sketching
Sketching
Evaluation
Expert Review
Expert Review Remote testing
Remote testing
Face-To-Face Testing
Face-To-Face Testing
Heuristic Review
Heuristic Review

11. Expert reviews by the team
Walkthrough example

12. Page level ratings
Customer view CMS author view Web team view
We send reports
with comment to
CMS authors
Socitm take-up survey
“Seems that once the library “I need to know if
computer system shuts down recycling centre takes
after hours, then looking up the microwaves - will ring”
catalogue or renewing is only for
the brave & persistent!!”
"It would like to be able to
search for bus information by
“I still don't know when street name. It is difficult to find
to apply for school for which buses go to which roads,
my child.” important to find out re how to
get to schools etc. "

13. Remote user testing
Remote testing
Remote
testing tells
you there is a
problem, but
not why
there’s a
problem

14. Moderated user testing
Moderated
testing reveals
why users are
having
problems
Step 4 - Improve
Change site templates and content to
improve usability and SEO
Create a seasonal top task calendar
Optimise task flow for top tasks
Revise site IA to align with top tasks
Audit and streamline content pages
Change content governance

15. 55 % of visits from search engines
9% of visits include the home page
Our new home page?

16. Use landing pages which link
to top tasks and use
terminology that matches
users’ search terms

17. Improve and test task
usability
Users struggled
with the search
by road number
The town/street
drop downs are
large and hard
to navigate

18. Road number and
name are now
combined in an auto-
suggest AJAX search
Step 5 - evaluate again!
Improvements to the Blue Badge
application process:
Decreased proportion of users starting an application
but failing to complete it, from 45% down to 26%
Decreased average time on task from 6 to 4 minutes

19. Track channel usage
Pothole Reporting Requests - Jan/Feb 2011
Number of customer contacts
800
700
600
Dec-11
500
400 Jan-11
300
Feb-11
200
100
0
Fixmystreet.co.uk Potholes.co.uk Fillthathole.org Direct from Direct from Highw ays Highw ays
customer email customer Reporting Reporting
telephone call Application w ith Accessible eForm
map
Where request cam e from
Measure channel shift trends
Channel usage
350,000
300,000
250,000
Non telephone Contacts to Contact Centre
200,000
Telephone calls to Contact Centre
Website visits
150,000
Website enquiries (online forms)
100,000
50,000
0
08
09
10
08
8
09
09
0
10
8
9
0
1
09
10
11
8
9
0
-1
r- 0
-0
-1
-1
-0
-0
-0
-1
n-
n-
n-
g-
g-
c-
c-
b-
b-
b-
ec
ug
pr
pr
pr
ct
ct
ct
Ap
Ju
Ju
Ju
Au
Au
De
De
Fe
Fe
Fe
O
O
O
A
A
A
D
A

20. What we’ve learnt
It can be resource intensive to analyse
and interpret the data, but it’s essential
We spend too much time training and
supporting content authors and
persuading them to make changes that
improve customer experience
Some tasks are not within our immediate
control (3rd party supplier systems)
Our next steps
Audit content and authoring process
Streamline content - quality not quantity
Revise content authoring model
Improve IA and review navigation
Get better info from the Contact Centre
Consistent measurement of customer
contact across all channels

21. Some useful links
http://www.loop11.com
http://www.crazyegg.com
http://silverbackapp.com/
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/
http://www.usability.gov
http://undercoverux.com/
For more information
Michele Ide-Smith, Web Strategy Manager
Cambridgeshire County Council
Phone: 01223 699710
Twitter: @micheleidesmith
Email: michele.ide-smith@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
I sometimes blog about this stuff: http://www.ide-smith.co.uk