Gone But Not Forgotten



Hello, you've landed on DATA eh? - Open Data Toronto's original blog space for data discussions. This is not an active blog at the moment but legacy posts are still here. Have a read ... you can still provide comments.



Tuesday, September 7, 2010

ottawa.ca is to Ottawa as __________ is to __________

NOTE: This is content from the web re:Brand posts going back to November 2010. We have kept the re:Brand posts as a legacy archive but, on a go forward basis as of October, 2011, the new DATA eh? content takes over this space.

Ottawa is yet another city to launch a changed website this year.  Now, of course, we are getting pretty close to home with Ottawa being in the same province.

So, I thought I'd title this post with the same type of "fill in the blanks" we've been throwing out on twitter from time to time - "our website is to the City as blank is to blank". We get an idea of how users see the website in relation to the City itself.

Love to hear your comments on what we might take from Ottawa.

I personally like the fact they are promoting their social media presence right on their home page with twitter, YouTube and flickr links as well as a dedicated twitter feed. On the screen capture I added to this page, I selected the YouTube link so you see a video segment in what is normally the twitter feed box.


I note also the spot underneath the social media spot for comments on the site changes. We would like to bump our comments presence on our website too but make it directly associated with specific web pages. I've long felt we'd get more comments if users could address their issues right from the pages they are on - we could also better associate what issues specific pages present for users.  What I'm talking about is what Google and others do at the end of pages - "Was this helpful?" etc.

Anyway, congratulations Ottawa ... who's next up for changes? We're still a ways away.

Bookmark and Share
#32/2010

2 comments:

Patrick Connolly said...

Hey there Keith! Long time no post :)

Has there been any discussion on using a service like uservoice or GetSatisfaction, so that the tab shows up on every page of the site? I can't be sure, but I think comments can be linked to the page on which the feedback link was clicked...

Then again, I understand if this sort of feature might muddle the line between website feedback and city service feedback, and it might be tough to spell out the differences

Open Data - Toronto said...

HI Pat, I think we have to start exploring means to do these kind of things even if they are interim solutions only. That's a personal opinion as I can't speak for the technical, security side of this issue very well. But if we had the comment box specifically for every page, it would clearly make reacting to that page's problems( or good stuff) much easier. I think we've shown we're prepared to accept feedback in all its forms be it a page or the website in general.