Dec. 16, 2004
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be a part of our group.
Location: City of Overland Park , KS, Police Dept. Conference Room
Attendance
Randy Ellis & Susan
Waters of Overland Park
Kevin
Whelan, Karen Sorenson & Brett
Williamson of Johnson County
Daniel
Davis & Joe
Janner of Jackson County
Rich
Lovett of Kansas City , MO
Barbara
Hensley & Julie
Wittman of MARC
Anthony
Oropeza of JCPRD
Kelli
Behr of Gladstone
Critiquing Web Sites
Chairman Barbara
Hensley had distributed meeting materials prior to the start of the meeting.
Among the handouts were copies of various critiquing tools from Graphic-Design.com,
Sitepoint.com, Don’t Make Me Think and
others. There was also a Website Self-Assessment form provided by
Susan Waters.
Barbara explained how one of the conference attendees emailed her to request a critique of her city’s site. The group viewed www.miamiok.org and provided the following comments:
Some of the members thought the rotating photos on the home page were nice; however, most agreed the rotation was distracting. The group suggested they could be improved by: 1) rotating the photos only upon the user’s screen refresh; 2) making all the photos the same size and X/Y orientation to eliminate extra white space; 3) keeping the file size low for fast loading; and 4) providing titles of the subject matter.
Regarding the narrative of the website, the group provided the following suggestions and comments: 1) the font size of the body text and many links was too small and difficult to read; 2) the background color behind the links is unpleasant and unidentifiable; the group could not agree on what color it was. It was also inconsistent from page to page, whether it was for a link or visited link; 3) the body text of most pages was too wordy; it should be broken up into sub-pages and even sub-sub-pages; 4) the content of each page should be broken up for easier flow and less scrolling down; and 5) more proofreading should be performed to eliminate typographical errors.
Regarding the navigation of the pages: 1) some menus have justified text while others don’t, making it difficult to read; 2) consider submenus to break up the long drop-down menus in smaller chunks; 3) the Site Map page is very unattractive; consider larger headings and subheadings to differentiate the areas of the site; 4) the word “Home” should be removed from the home page as it is redundant; and 5) the banner logo on each page should be a link back to the home page, except on the home page.
Regarding the design of the site: 1) the banner is very attractive, as is the navy color selected; 2) it is difficult to tell one line or item from another—consider variation in the font size, color and style to highlight headings, subheadings and special features of the site; 3) there should be Alt tags added to all of the graphics and images on the site; 4) on pages that contain an image or logo at the top, followed by the body text, the image should be removed and the text moved to the top of the page; 5) investigate file sizes for possible reduction; there was a delay in load time for some pages and images; 6) the white space created around the page content on larger monitors was overpowering, consider adding a border or wrapper to the pages with a different background color behind the main content; and 7) remove reference and logos to Macromedia/Dreamweaver—they’re not paying Miami for advertising, right?
General Comments: 1) The site contains an impressive amount of information and the content itself is very good. It is the presentation of the information that could use improvement; 2) Try to have shorter pages with less content and links that lead to more detail; the What’s New page is a good example of how the items could be featured on the page with links to the details on separate pages; 3) Eliminate the city logo from the bottom of each page where the copyright info is located since it is already featured nicely in the banner; and 4) make efforts to make the site more senior-friendly and easier to read through.
Closing Comments: Gathering the content is the hardest part of building a Web site, and Miami has already done that well. The suggestions above are minor changes that can make a major different in the site’s appearance.
Susan Waters asked the group to critique her online city newsletter entitled Overview online. The group provided the following comments:
1) There is good navigation and lots of it; however, it is not altogether clear—consider an intro page that explains the different sections of the newsletter, then navigates through; 2) the use of HTML format rather than PDF is a commendable choice; however, it may help to allow the PDF version as an option; 3) the “Subscribe” form should be added to the newsletter pages instead of the view having to reroute to find it; and 4) it may be beneficial to have the online version of the newsletter look more like the printed version—same colors and styles—to make it more identifiable as the same product.
Susan also asked the group to suggest improvements for the other e-newsletters she provides via email. She felt they were unattractive and lacked style. The group disagreed and said they look professional. Barbara accessed MARC’s new Regional Press Room to show examples of other cities’ news releases; they were all plain, mostly black & white and had no real format compared to Susan’s.
The group then had a discussion about how MARC’s Regional Press Room works. Barbara informed them that 215 people had viewed the pages before any marketing was done. A few of the members discussed how RSS and XML could greatly enhance the process. However, MARC currently does not have the staff and resources to make that happen. Additionally, most of the cities working with MARC on the project are not trained in RSS/XML at this time. In the future, it is hoped the staff and training will be expanded for all involved.
Kelli Behr asked the group to provide feedback on Gladstone ’s main Web site. The group provided the following comments:
1) Placing a mission statement on the home page is a mistake because no one reads them; 2) the site contains antiquated language such as “Click here to…”; this should all be removed; 3) features such as Current Events and News Headlines should be removed unless the information is continually kept up to date; 4) there are too many PDFs on the site, many of which are too large for easy downloading—these should be eliminated; 5) all yellow fonts should be removed because they’re difficult to read; 6) each page should have consistency within the font usage, color and style; 7) some of the narration is obviously copied from printed media and shown on the Web, leaving redundant language such as the website address of the page the viewer is on—this information should be edited for the Web; 8) some of the pages are quite wordy and long while others are lacking information—until the short pages are improved, consider consolidating them with other short pages; 9) pages with too much narration should be shortened or broken up into sub-pages; 10) all features that aren’t being used, such as “advertisements for bid,” should be removed rather than leaving them blank—it’s misleading; 11) there is great potential for improvement of the parks information pages—add more photos and maps on the pages rather than buried in a PDF; and 12) the group liked the banner most of all but felt the content needed improvement.
Old Business
Rich
Lovett provided an update on the proposed National Association of Government
Webmasters (NAGW), now being formed. The planning group includes three people
from MAGWeb (Rich, Chris Audano and Chris Holdman) who are working with Kel Waltz
and his team in Colorado . Some interested parties submitted logo designs, including
Kelli Behr. Agreeing on the logo is their first task before they begin marketing
the organization. They have purchased a domain name: www.governmentwebmasters.org.
New Business
and Q&A
Time
Someone
asked for an update on the status of the 2005 Webmasters Conference. Rich
said the planning group has not confirmed anything yet. MAGWeb
has provided as much information as possible to this point, and it is up to the
Colorado group to decide how to proceed.
Barbara described a problem she was having with HTML formatted e-mails that she sends. When the format includes a style sheet reference, the formatting is lost when she pastes the content into the e-mail. Brett Williamson explained that if her HTML includes the fully qualified path to the style sheet, it should function correctly. To clarify, each link must have the “http://www….etc…” in the HTML. The group discussed alternate options for doing this with Outlook.
The group also discussed how certain programs will block emails such as these under the assumption that they are spam. Susan discussed the program she uses, bCentral, to achieve this task of sending out her e-newsletters. She does not necessarily recommend this product, but it is available for approximately $250 for 10,000 emails per month.
Rich reminded the group of how the Conference Planning Committee purchased a list of e-mail addresses from the Missouri Municipal League for the purposes of marketing. He asked the group if there is any objection to sending this information to help the Denver planning group market their conference. The group agreed it would be a good choice to send Denver the information.
Kelli asked about the CSS training suggested by Roman Madrigal. Some of the members were interested in attending but didn’t have any other details from Roman. She discussed some of her difficulties with CSS positioning in different browsers.
Dan Davis explained he is striving to achieve maximum accessibility with his site. He is searching for a free version of a screen-reading browser so he can design his site around it. Kevin Whelan suggested he try Jaws, as it is the most common product. He thinks it can be used by developers for testing in half-hour increments. Randy Ellis mentioned that Microsoft may have a free product available for testing as well. Dan said he is interested in forming a subcommittee or study group to focus on designing for accessibility, including using CSS to do so. He was provided the contact for the School of the Blind: KSSB.Net.
Susan asked if anyone is using Flash for animation yet. Kelli said she is beginning to do so after some training. The group may consider doing a session on Flash at a later meeting.
Next Meeting
Jan. 20, 2005, at MARC
Rich suggested a topic
of exchanging snippets of JavaScript code. Kelli said she had heard during
the conference that JavaScript causes problems for some browsers and for
accessibility. She was informed that is becoming a problem of the past. She
said if the group is interested in the topic, she can assist Rich in planning
it since she has collected quite a bit of code for fun effects.