City of Port Coquitlam

Upanup worked with the City in the spring of 2023 to complete an accessibility and user experience audit of the former website. We looked at current accessibility standards, staff satisfaction with the website, generally accepted heuristic guidelines and industry standards/best practices for municipal websites. The main challenge was that City staff found the former website CMS cumbersome to edit. It was built on an outdated platform and was not responsive/mobile friendly, which was determined to be a high priority for a new site build as the majority of the City's website users visited using a mobile device. Another challenge was that site search was slow to respond and the City received feedback that results were not always accurate. The information architecture was also difficult to navigate and it was not clear when page content had last been updated in many cases. These things caused users to question the validity of information contained on the website.

Upanup began the project with an in-depth strategy meeting to ensure the project team and internal stakeholders goals were aligned. We used several qualitative research methods to inform our review. These included:

• Interviews with City staff to get a full 360 picture of how the website was performing. 
• Hallway testing with internal Upanup staff to gain insights into the design and function of the website and provide immediate insights around usability issues. 
• A Heuristic checklist designed specifically for municipal websites was used as a systemic way to assess the structure of the website. This type of user-centric evaluation helps us find potential areas for improvement leading to an overall improved user experience. 
• A best practices comparison was completed to help the City better understand user experience satisfaction based on set standards. 
• A data review on website performance related to accessibility was conducted and we reviewed analytics data to understand trends and draw conclusions on website usage.

The data gathered was used to help our team identify common themes, pain points to be avoided with a new site, and positive aspects of the website that should be carried over into the new site. This holistic picture helped inform Upanup's recommendations on how to proceed in the website redesign process.

The Upanup team presented the the findings and recommendations report to key stakeholders at the City. Findings were organized around usability, information architecture, training and resources, internal processes, page content, search, and back end technology. Our recommendations included:

• Creation of a content governance plan and content strategy to help guide website content editors and encourage consistency in written and visual content. 
• A complete redesign of the information architecture as it was determined users experienced too many clicks to access needed information. 
• Building and maintaining an accessible website, as it was determined through this project that trying to update or refresh the then-current-website would not be feasible. 
• Leveraging a user friendly and robust CMS, to move away from issues with incompatible plug-ins. Creating a custom user friendly/accessible design to ensure consistency and properly balancing white space with format and styled elements. 
• Developing a responsive website as it was found the majority of site traffic was from mobile and the then-current-website did not adapt well to fit different screen sizes/widths.

A detailed report including several detailed appendices was provided to the City as a tool to help their future website redevelopment (the website at portcoquitlam.ca has since been redesigned).