Government of Yukon audit workbook instructions

ECO communications

Updated: April 2017

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ContentsAbout Government of Yukon website audits...............................................................................................4

Audit tools and skills....................................................................................................................................4

Webtrends...............................................................................................................................................4

Microsoft Excel........................................................................................................................................4

Audit workbook.......................................................................................................................................4

Government of Yukon Style Guide..........................................................................................................4

Writing for the Government of Yukon website.......................................................................................4

Begin your website audit.............................................................................................................................5

User research workbook instructions..........................................................................................................6

Getting your data from Webtrends.........................................................................................................6

Filter your results.....................................................................................................................................7

Export your Webtrends analytics report.................................................................................................7

Sort your data and delete pages you don’t need.....................................................................................8

How do I audit French pages?...............................................................................................................10

Combine duplicate pages......................................................................................................................10

Interpreting the web analytics data columns............................................................................................11

Number of unique page visits................................................................................................................11

Page views.............................................................................................................................................11

Entry page visits.....................................................................................................................................11

Average time viewed (in seconds).........................................................................................................12

Bounce rate...........................................................................................................................................12

Fill out the User need analysis columns.....................................................................................................12

Related search phrases (Keywords).......................................................................................................12

Topic......................................................................................................................................................13

Sub-topic...............................................................................................................................................13

User need statement.............................................................................................................................14

Does this page fulfil the user need statement? If Yes, how and if No, then why?.................................14

Recommendation (Keep, delete, consolidate, other)............................................................................14

Page audit worksheet instructions............................................................................................................15

Date audited..........................................................................................................................................15

Page file name (URL) and Page title columns........................................................................................15

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Page description....................................................................................................................................15

Page keywords.......................................................................................................................................15

Content observations............................................................................................................................16

Does the page content fulfill its user need statement?.........................................................................16

Images...................................................................................................................................................16

Last updated..........................................................................................................................................16

Broken links...........................................................................................................................................17

Applications and tools...........................................................................................................................17

Present your recommendations to your branches and program areas.....................................................18

Audit implementation workshops.............................................................................................................18

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About Government of Yukon website auditsThe Government of Yukon website has too much content. Citizens can’t find what they need (Citizens First study 2014, YG Top Tasks study 2015, website inquiries and usability tests). Department resources are dedicated to maintaining and adding content instead of assessing and improving websites with content that is important to their clients.

The Government of Yukon is embarking on a website content migration project. We will be moving from our current content management system called Open Text (RedDot) to a platform called Drupal. The new website will be called Yukon.ca. Our focus will be on creating content that meets citizens’ expectations to easily access concise, helpful government information and quality online services.

Not all existing website content will move to Yukon.ca.

This audit process is meant to be a high level overview of what content departments can delete, what content should be kept and how it should be rewritten to help the user complete a task. This is a starting point. The Government of Yukon is committed to testing and continually improving website content on Yukon.ca. Ensuring citizens can find information and access services on our website is a priority. Once Yukon.ca is live, we will focus our attention on identifying content gaps, testing pages with users and continuing to improve the website and our internal processes to better serve citizens.

Audit tools and skillsWebtrendsYou will need a WebTrends account to pull together the analytics for your projects. Department website managers will coordinate account creation with eServices by contacting sara.bergquist@gov.yk.ca.

Microsoft ExcelYou need basic Microsoft Excel spreadsheet knowledge to complete the audit workbook.

Audit workbookThe latest version of the audit workbook can be found on our Writing for the Government of Yukon webpage - http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/writing-for-government-yukon.html.

Government of Yukon Style GuideThe Government of Yukon Style Guide is designed to help you communicate effectively with your audiences and maintain a consistent, professional standard. The latest version of the guide can be found on our Writing for the Government of Yukon webpage - http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/writing-for-government-yukon.html.

Writing for the Government of Yukon websiteThis is a standards document to be used when writing content for the Government of Yukon website. The latest version can be found on our Writing for the Government of Yukon webpage - http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/writing-for-government-yukon.html.

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Begin your website auditThere are two worksheets in the Government of Yukon website audit workbook.

1. User research. This worksheet focuses on analytics. The main purpose of the data in this section is to give you an idea of what web pages you should delete and what you should keep.

2. Page audit (SEO). This is where you evaluate the content on a page. You can include all of your pages in this tab, but I recommend focusing only on the pages you want to keep.

All content will need to be rewritten before it is considered for content migration to Yukon.ca. Your review of page content in this tab should result in recommendations to improve your branch and program area page content. This might involve things like rewriting the page, merging pages together by topic, deleting information on the page that doesn’t help with the task or identifying areas that don’t follow the Government of Yukon Style Guide and Writing for the Government of Yukon website standards (http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/writing-for-government-yukon.html).

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User research workbook instructionsThe following steps will walk you through populating the columns in the user research worksheet. Make sure you add the name of the project you are auditing in the User research report for: field. The project could be your department website or a branch. It depends how you tackle your audit.

Getting your data from Webtrends1. Log in to Webtrends v10 – https://analytics.webtrends.com.

2. Select Profiles from the left-hand menu.

3. Select the profile for the site you are auditing. We recommend using the main analytics profile for your site and not the citizens only profile. Citizens only profiles exclude Government of Yukon IP addresses. If you have time, examining the citizens only profile can provide even more insights worth looking into.

4. Set the date range to a minimum of 365 days.

5. Add the date range you have selected in Webtrends to the User research worksheet in the Analytics date range: field at the top of the page.

6. Add the date you audited the project in the Date website audit was conducted: field in the User research worksheet.

7. Now that you have selected a profile, you will look to the Reports left-hand menu. Click Content to expand the menu and then click Site Pages. Your report will populate the screen.

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8. The data should display from the highest number of visits to lowest. If it is not displaying this way, click Visits to change the view.

Filter your resultsSometimes profiles include pages from multiple projects. For example, if I am auditing the Youth Directorate, I would use the ECO profile, but it would also provide me with data from all of ECO’s branches.

You can filter the results so WebTrends displays only the pages you need for your audit.

Enter a snippet of the page URL into the Add/Remove Column space. For example, if I am on the ECO project, but just want to view Intergovernmental Relations pages, I look to the site URL - http://www.eco.gov.yk.ca/igr/index.html and I pull out /igr/ and add that to the filter. The pages displayed will all fall under that directory.

Click the magnifying glass to run the filter.

Export your Webtrends analytics report1. Select the Export report icon and select Download CSV.

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2. Click the box with the download file name and save your report.

3. Open the saved CSV file in Microsoft Excel. Delete the following:

Column headers. Select row 1, press the shift key and then click row 2. Right click and delete.

Date range in column 1. Select column 1, right click and delete.

4. Copy the data to the audit workbook. Click on cell A1. Press Ctrl A to select all of the data. Click Ctrl C to copy the cells you’ve selected. Paste the data to your audit workbook. In the workbook, click on cell A6 to select it. Click

Ctrl V to paste.

Sort your data and delete pages you don’t needYou might find pages appear in your results that you don’t need. This can include reddot preview pages or pages that have translate in the Page filename (URL). It is easiest to sort the worksheet by the Page file name (URL) to group the pages for easy identification and deletion.

1. Click on cell A62. Click the Data tab

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3. Select Sort4. Sort by Page file name (URL). Ensure Sort On is set to Values and Order is set to A to Z. Click OK.5. Scroll down the page and you will see a cluster of entries with http://reddot.gov.yk.ca in the

page file name (URL). Highlight the first row by clicking the row number. This will highlight the entire row.

6. Scroll down the page to the last http://reddot.gov.yk.ca entry. Press the Shift key and click the row number. Right click and select delete.

7. You might also come across clusters of pages with translate in the Page file name (URL). You can delete these pages from the audit workbook.

Once you are done, you will need to sort the data back to highest to lowest number of page visits.

1. Click cell A62. Click the Data tab3. Select Sort4. Sort by Number of visits. Ensure Sort On is set to Values and Order is set to Largest to Smallest.

Click OK.

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How do I audit French pages?French pages have fr in the Page file name (URL). Keep these pages in the audit. You will want to evaluate these pages in the page audit worksheet for the Page file name (URL), metadata and last updated date.

The page content on these pages will be updated on the French side of the website once the English side of the website has been updated.

Combine duplicate pagesMany WebTrends reports show pages as two or more entries with slightly different Page file names (URL). You should combine these pages into one entry in the workbook if the duplicate page adds more than 10 unique page visits. If there are less than 10 unique page views – delete the duplicate entry.

Combine the data for these pages manually

1. Add the number of unique page visits together and update that column.2. Add the number of page views together and update that column.3. Add entry page visits together and update that column.4. Calculate the combined average time viewed in seconds

a. Add the averages together and divide that number by the number of pages you are combining. This will give you the combined average time viewed in seconds and you can update that column in the worksheet. (If you are combining two pages, add the two average times together and divide that number by two, if you are combing three average times, you would divide that number by three, etc.)

5. Calculate the combined average bounce ratea. Add the averages together and divide that number by the number of pages you are

combining. This will give you the combined average bounce rate and you can update that column in the worksheet. (If you are combining two pages, add the two average bounce rates together and divide that number by two, if you are combing three average bounce rates, you would divide that number by three, etc.)

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Interpreting the web analytics data columnsNow that you have added the analytics data and removed all of the pages you don’t need, you can start to interpret the data. We will go through this next section column by column.

Number of unique page visitsThis is the number of unique visitors that have come to the page. Often with analytics a person will visit a site once, but might view a page multiple times in that one visit.

A higher number of unique visits in relation to visits on pages in the rest of your site can indicate the content is valued. It can also mean search engines are leading users to the page. Big numbers in this column doesn’t necessarily mean the content on the page meets a user need. Review your content and make sure the steps to task completion are clear.

A lower number of unique page visits could indicate the page is disconnected from the rest of the site or was deleted from the content management system but is still appearing online. Check if the page should be live or not. If it shouldn’t delete it from the content management system. Email service.desk@gov.yk.ca the URL and request it be deleted from the server.

Page viewsPage views is the number of times a page has been viewed. A user can visit a site once, but view a page multiple times during that single visit. When you look at analytics, the number of page views should always be greater than the number of visits.

A higher number of page views can indicate people are returning to the page because it is updated frequently, they might find the content to be important to their task, or it could mean they are having trouble finding what they are looking for so they keep returning to the page.

If the number of views seems higher than you would expect, have a look at the content on the page. Is the page focused on a task or topic? Is the page title or headings misleading? Can you easily follow the steps or process laid out on the page? If you are confused, chances are your user is confused and the content will need to be reworked.

If the number of page views is lower than you might expect, make sure the page is linked to your website navigation so people can access it. You can also Google the topic and see if the page appears in search. And once again, look at the content on the page. Is it valuable to the user? Is it written in plain language? Does it fulfil a user need statement?

Entry page visitsEntry page visits are the number of times a page was the first page viewed on the website.

A low number might indicate the page content isn’t being indexed very high in search results. This would mean the content on the page needs to be reworked.

If the number of entry page visits is high, look at the bounce rate for the page. If the bounce rate is also high, this could indicate the page content is performing well and meeting a user need. To be sure, examine the page content. Is it a stand alone page that addresses a user need? In this case it makes sense the page content is meeting that need. If the page is part of a series of pages where you need to

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refer to more than one page to complete a task then there could be an issue with the content that needs to be addressed.

Average time viewed (in seconds)This is the amount of time a user spent on a webpage. You will need to look at the content on the page to determine what the average time means.

Pages with a lot of content focused on a single topic will likely have a higher average time viewed because the user will be spending more time on the page. If the page is short and simple, a high number of average time viewed could mean the user is having a difficult time finding what they are looking for.

If this number is low, it could indicate the page content isn’t helping the user complete a task.

Average bounce rateThe average bounce rate is the number of times a page was a single page visit divided by the number of times that page was an entry page. A possible scenario could be that a person used Google and found themselves on a page. They then left the site without visiting any other page on the site.

A high or low bounce rate can be good or bad. You will need to examine the content to figure this out.

A high bounce rate on a home page is bad. The whole point of a home page is to orient the user and have all of their options clearly laid out. A high bounce rate on a page with content focused on task completion is good. This means the user is doing the thing they came to the page to do and then exiting the site.

A low bounce rate on a page with content focused on task completion might be a sign the page content is not meeting a user need.

Note: If you want to dig a step further you can run a Next pages report on the page in question. You will be able to see where the visitor went after they left a particular page.

1. Select Pages: Next from the Content section of the left-hand menu.2. Click on the page you are interested in. This will display the page dashboard. The next pages are

listed under the bounce rate figure. You can hover over the links to see the entire URL.

Knowing where the user is going next in their journey will provide you with insights that might help clarify the task they are on the site to do.

Fill out the User need analysis columnsRelated search phrases (Keywords)The following steps are manual and will take a bit of time, but search phrases and keywords help us understand user behaviour and identify relevant topics.

1. In Webtrends make sure your date range is the same as before and that you are still in the Site Pages report.

2. Click the page to access a dashboard that will display related search phrases for that page.

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3. Highlight the words. Copy and paste them into the appropriate cell in the audit workbook. Separate the phrases with a comma.

Note: If you don’t see any search phrases on the dashboard, it means the users didn’t get to the page as a result of doing a search.

If you notice your users are searching for phrases different than those used on the page, look at integrating these terms in the page content where possible.

TopicTopics are high-level tags that identify broad themes on a website. Examples can be industry sectors (mining and exploration), processes (starting a business) or general themes (fishing and camping).

At this point in the process we don’t have any set topics, but we want you to record and share the natural groupings you find as you start diving into your content. You can refer to sites like the Government of Ontario where they have organized their website in high-level topics - https://www.ontario.ca/page/government-ontario as an example.

These groupings are basically a site map.

Sub-topicSub-topics are secondary tags that are a bit more detailed. They are specific to a particular subject or area of interest like business tax or fishing license. The purpose of identifying sub-topics is to get you and your program area subject matter experts to start thinking about groupings.

Target usersIt’s important you identify your target users (audience) as a starting point. Work with your program areas to consider who you want to target with your web page content. If you are hiring an agency to do

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your website audit, you will need to provide them with this information before they start. This will ensure they have some context when they have to evaluate the whether or not the page content meets the user need statement or statements.

Example: The Youth Directorate has a page on Youth leadership training (http://www.youth.gov.yk.ca/youth-leadership-training.html). Their target users are Yukon youth who are interested in learning how to plan and run activities and programs in their community.

User need statementThinking of our users is key to readying our content for migrating it to Drupal. The purpose of writing a user need statement or statements is so we can evaluate the page content to make sure it meets that need. If it doesn’t, it will need to be rewritten so it does. If there is no user need, there is no need for the content on the website.

A user need statement should follow this format:

As a _________________ I need to ____________________ so I can _______________________.

Example: As a high school student in Teslin I need to take training to build up my leadership skills so I can lead activities at my summer job.

Does this page fulfil the user need statement? If Yes, how and if No, then why?Now that you have your user need statement (or statements) for your page it is time to evaluate the content on the page to ensure it meets the user need.

Recommendation (Keep, delete, consolidate, other)Once you have this sheet filled out and you’ve interpreted your data, you will have recommendations for your department or program areas. You will have grouped content into topics and sub-topics, you will have begun to think about user need statements and you will have a pretty good idea about what pages to keep and what pages to delete.

You can move all of these pages to the next tab (Page audit) or just bring over the pages you intend on keeping. There is no point doing the work on content you will be deleting.

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Page audit (SEO) worksheet instructionsThe purpose of this worksheet is to evaluate the content and make recommendations to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) on the pages you are keeping. We will go through this next section column by column.

Date auditedAdd the date you audited each page.

Page file name (URL) and Page title columns Go back to the User research tab. You might want to sort your information by the recommendation column so you can easily copy

and paste only the pages you are going to audit. Copy and paste the cells you need from the Page file name (URL) and Page title columns. Don’t

include the column headers as they already exist in the page audit section of the workbook. Switch back to the Page audit section and paste the cells.

Evaluating your page file name (URL). Make sure the file name isn’t a number. It should describe the page content or task. Use lowercase and separate words with hyphens. Example: minister-travel-expense-reports

Evaluating your page title. The page title should be clear and describe the task on the page. It should be written in sentence case. If the page title is Mental health clinics the user would likely expect to find a listing of mental health clinics with contact information. If the page content is nothing like this the page title should be rewritten.

Page descriptionThe page description is a piece of metatdata that every page should have. You can find out what the page description is in RedDot by opening the page and viewing the Page description field or you can view it in Chrome by right-clicking and selecting View page source or in Explorer and selecting View source. The page description is located in the <meta name=”Description” content=” tag.

You are evaluating whether or not the page has a description. If it doesn’t, the recommendation is to write one. If it has a page description evaluate whether or it reflects the page content. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, the recommendation it that it should be rewritten.

When you Google a topic, this page description is what appears below the link to your site. You will see a limited number of characters displayed so it’s important to get straight to the point and let the user know what they can expect on the page.

Note: Yes, Google is indexing pages based more and more on the page content, but it is still a good practice to include a page description.

Page keywordsKeywords are also a piece of the webpage metadata and they are also important to use in the content on your webpage. They help search engines index pages. Yes, Google is indexing pages based more and more on the page content, but it is still a good practice to include keywords in the page metadata as well.

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You can find out a page’s keywords in RedDot by opening the page and viewing the Keywords field or you can view it in Chrome by right-clicking and selecting View page source or in Explorer and selecting View source. The keywords are located in the <meta name=”Keywords” content=” tag.

You are evaluating whether or not the page has keywords. If it doesn’t, the recommendation is to add them. If it has keywords evaluate whether or they reflect the page content. If they do, great. If they don’t, the recommendation it they should be rewritten.

Content observations Everything on our existing website will need to be rewritten before it is migrated to the new website. Does it meet the page’s user need statement? Does it follow the Government of Yukon Style Guide and writing for the Government of Yukon website document? Offer suggestions for improvement. You might even want to take a crack at rewriting the page content to show your program areas how the content can be improved.

We will be developing page templates as we move through the content migration process so this will make this much easier for everyone to visualize.

ImagesIf the page has images, you will need to evaluate:

Copyright. Does your program area have permission to use the image on it’s website? Alt text. This field must be filled out. Alt text is picked up by screen readers and it is what you

see when you hover your curser over an image in most browsers. You can view the alt text in RedDot by clicking on the image and selecting Edit image properties or you can view it in the browser. Just view the page source code and locate the image tag. Example: <img style=”float: left;” alt=”Photo of Premier Sandy Silver” src=”.

File name. Image file names are important as Google indexes images. Make sure your file name is clear, descriptive and follows the Government of Yukon’s file naming standard. Example: premier-silver-signs-language-agreement

Quality. Is the image clear? Does it add value to the page? Does it help the user complete a task? Or does it get in the way?

Your recommendations will be based on your evaluation of these elements.

Last updatedThe Last Updated date appears in the footer of all pages on gov.yk.ca. Add this date for each of your pages.

Page content needs to be reviewed at least twice a year and updated accordingly. If you find you have a lot of pages that haven’t been touched in two or more years, it’s time to look at the content, look at your data in the User research worksheet and decide whether or not you should keep it.

Broken linksReview all links on the page. If there are broken links, make note in this column.

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Applications and toolsMake a note if the page has any applications or tools. It will be important to identify these as we move toward migrating the content. This is also a place where you can make a note of any applications or tools you are looking at developing to improve the user experience. If you have a good idea or examples from other jurisdictions, share it here.

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Present your recommendations to your branches and program areasNow that you have completed the user research and page audit worksheets you will need to present your findings to your branch and program area staff.

If you are a contractor, you can provide the department with a report in Word.

The PowerPoint presentation is really more of a conversation about the audit. The idea is to show how the content can be improved. This means using lots of examples of reworked pages.

The number one questions we get is “Well that sounds great, but now what?” so you need to show the program areas the what. Let them know what you need them to do, what you will be doing and how it will fit in with the overall project.

If you want some samples of audit recommendation presentations we’ve done in the past please email sara.bergquist@gov.yk.ca.

Audit implementation workshopsECO will facilitate audit implementation workshops at the request of the department. We book a computer lab and we work with you and your team to tackle the audit recommendations. We will help you clean up your sites and get the content one step closer to being ready for migration.

Email sara.bergquist@gov.yk.ca to set up a session.

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