managing top tasks
DESCRIPTION
This was a presentation given at the 'Building Perfect CouTRANSCRIPT
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 approachBut 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?
It’s an iterative process
Step 1 – Analyse data
Google Analytics unique page views search terms
Crazy Egg – heat map of user clicksTransactions (eforms, payments)Calls to the Contact Centre*Face to face contacts** We’re working on how we map these to web contacts
Council staff are not customers!
So filter out Council traffic
This page was set as the home page on all PCs in Libraries
Track impact of marketing and promotional activities
Annotations in Google Analytics
Look at search statistics for users’ search terms
Find out where customers click (using Crazy Egg or
Google Analytics)
Tracking customer journeys across multiple domains can
be tricky
Categorise and log customer contact consistently across
all contact channels
Contact Centre calls (April)
Contact Centre libraries stats
How do we map the data? No consistency between categories!
Web top tasks (April)
Categories are too broad
Step 2 – Define top tasks
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
Apply for school admissions
Buy BMD certificates
Pay parking fine
Find realtime bus information
Find info on registry offices
Find info on ticket types
Plan a journey
Find info on parking tickets
Find school details
Find info on person centred approach
Contact us
Find school term dates
Find library opening times/details
Find info on bus routes
Find info on jobs
Find info on busway
Find info on park and ride
Find or renew library book
Find bus timetables
Unique Page Views and Search Terms
Top tasks
Step 3 – Evaluate (existing)
Evaluate usability and effectiveness of the top tasks using different methods
Analyse customer comments / feedbackIf you use Google Analytics – set up
goals to track conversion ratesCollect baseline data!
User Experience: Method CardsUser Experience: TechniquesAuthor: Matthew Godfrey
Published: 25/10/2010
Techniques Overview
Research
Design
Evaluation
AnalyticsAnalytics
Competitor AnalysisCompetitor Analysis Surveys/QuestionnairesSurveys/Questionnaires
PersonasPersonas
Task Analysis/FlowTask Analysis/Flow
SketchingSketching
WireframingWireframing
Mock-upsMock-ups
Paper prototypingPaper prototyping
HTML PrototypingHTML Prototyping
Card SortCard Sort
Expert ReviewExpert Review
Heuristic ReviewHeuristic Review Face-To-Face TestingFace-To-Face Testing
Remote testingRemote testing
User Flows/Journey MapUser Flows/Journey Map
Expert reviews by the team
Walkthrough example
Page level ratingsCustomer view CMS author view Web team view
We send reports with comment to CMS authors
Socitm take-up survey
“Seems that once the library computer system shuts down
after hours, then looking up the catalogue or renewing is only for
the brave & persistent!!”
“I still don't know when to apply for school for
my child.”
“I need to know if recycling centre takes microwaves - will ring”
"It would like to be able to search for bus information by
street name. It is difficult to find which buses go to which roads, important to find out re how to
get to schools etc. "
Remote user testing
Remote testingRemote testing tells you there is a problem, but not why there’s a problem
Moderated user testingModerated 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 calendarOptimise task flow for top tasksRevise site IA to align with top tasksAudit and streamline content pagesChange content governance
55 % of visits from search engines9% of visits include the home page
Our new home page?
Use landing pages which link to top tasks and use
terminology that matches users’ search terms
Improve and test task usability
Users struggled with the search by road number
The town/street drop downs are large and hard to navigate
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
Track channel usage
Pothole Reporting Requests - Jan/Feb 2011
0100200300400500600700800
Fixmystreet.co.uk Potholes.co.uk Fillthathole.org Direct fromcustomer email
Direct fromcustomer
telephone call
Highw aysReporting
Application w ithmap
Highw aysReporting
Accessible eForm
Where request came from
Nu
mb
er o
f cu
sto
mer
co
nta
cts
Dec-11
Jan-11
Feb-11
Measure channel shift trends
Channel usage
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
350,000
Apr-0
8
Jun-
08
Aug-0
8
Oct-08
Dec-08
Feb-0
9
Apr-0
9
Jun-
09
Aug-0
9
Oct-09
Dec-09
Feb-1
0
Apr-1
0
Jun-
10
Aug-1
0
Oct-10
Dec-10
Feb-1
1
Apr-1
1
Non telephone Contacts to Contact Centre
Telephone calls to Contact Centre
Website visits
Website enquiries (online forms)
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 navigationGet better info from the Contact CentreConsistent measurement of customer
contact across all channels
Some useful links
http://www.loop11.comhttp://www.crazyegg.comhttp://silverbackapp.com/http://www.google.com/support/analytics/http://www.usability.govhttp://undercoverux.com/
For more information
Michele Ide-Smith, Web Strategy Manager
Cambridgeshire County Council
Phone: 01223 699710
Twitter: @micheleidesmith
Email: [email protected]
I sometimes blog about this stuff: http://www.ide-smith.co.uk