Course Description

Citizens come to government with their own goals and tasks in mind. Learn to focus your website and engagement activities on your customers and their major tasks – and how to present opportunities for them to engage when and where they want to. Come work with Ginny Redish and learn practical techniques for finding out:

• Who comes to your site (and who should be coming to the site)
• What tasks they come to do
• How to redo the information architecture, design, and writing of your site so it allows people to accomplish those tasks successfully
• Why engaging site visitors is so important and how to engage them by satisfying their needs

The day will be very practical. We'll use a case study for examples and exercises so that you'll have strategies and tactics to use immediately.

The case study involves reviewing search terms and web analytics to find out who your primary visitors are and what they primarily come to your site to do. We encourage you to bring your own data to work through the exercises for your site. Bring a list of the 100 – 200 most recent search terms for your site and a list of the most visited pages on your site. If you bring data for your site, you can focus on your site during the class exercises. (If you can't bring your own data, don't worry, you'll work on the case study Ginny brings to the class.)

Using data from search terms and web analytics, we'll consider how to revise the site so that your primary users can easily get to and successfully complete their primary tasks. You'll learn the 3 functions of a home page and how to tell if your site is meeting them. You'll learn the 1 function of pathway pages. You'll learn how to develop flow charts (navigation) for both information-seeking tasks and transactional tasks. You'll learn how to do persona-based, scenario–based reviews – a quick and easy way to uncover the barriers that keep site visitors from successfully engaging with your site. You'll learn how easy it is to do usability testing by watching and listening as site visitors try to engage with your site.