Website design feedback engagement summary

Why we engaged

The City of Kingston is redesign the public information website, CityofKingston.ca with the vision of creating a site that is modern, accessible, inclusive and accessible. Engagement with City staff, a part of the engagement process, is also underway.

How we engaged

A survey was hosted on Get Involved Kingston from Oct. 17 to 27. The community was provided opportunities to engage online, by phone or by mail. An opportunity to sign up for future user testing was also offered.

Who we heard from

15 engaged participants completed surveys
20 individuals signed up to take part in user testing
152 aware participants visited the project page

Next steps

Feedback from Get Involved Kingston will be considered in the design of the redeveloped website. Next steps include navigation testing, which will take place in Q1 2023.

What we heard

The following are a list of comments provided by registered Get Involved Kingston participants. Feedback that did not follow the City of Kingston's Guidelines for Participation were omitted from the feedback.

Q1 (What do you like about the current website?)

I can usually find what I'm looking for fairly quickly
The big buttons to take you to the places as a resident that I would use
Relatively easy to search and find what you're looking for.
It is functional and appearance is OK. It is for the most part user friendly and easy to navigate.
Clean look, easy to read
Lots of information available over many pages and tags
Easy to navigate, mostly clear choices to get the information I want. I like the resident tab and the garbage/recycling tabs work well.
There is a lot of information on the website
It has all the City-related info I'm looking for.
Clean Design
Lack of animations, events calendar being on the homepage, accessible colours, link to Kingston transit on homepage
Font size
Generally it has good speed
It is relatively easy to navigate. The "I'd like to" drop down is a nice feature.

Q2 (What do you dislike about the current site?)

When what I'm looking for is not readily findable from the column menus, the Search function is not usually helpful.
There is a lot of stuff and not sure if it is all needed?
Menu / organizational hierarchy doesn't make sense. How are items categorized under "Explore" vs "Resident"? Group all the transportation together (e.g. cycling is more than a tourist/recreation item. Put it with roads under "Resident").
No glaring issues but could use a refresh. Additional content could be sections for people new to the city.
Design looks extremely outdated
The amount of words is overwhelming on most pages. The pages are not enjoyable to look at. The information seems to be presented in the centre of the screen, with either side unused.
Response boxes don't expand to show text - Artillery park page needs to show ENTIRE price list, like weight room only.
There are link issues - links that are dead, go to missing pages, or are out of date. It's often easier to search Google for the information than the City website. The buttons at the top often look like images/background rather than being obvious buttons.
It can be difficult to find the info if it is contained in a council document. Council docs hard to navigate. Many of the useful features (i.e. rec & leisure class sign-ups, etc.) could be better centred/promoted on the site. The site is text heavy.
Can be hard to navigate to where you want to go
Navigation isn't clear, wasted space on homepage, design elements are small, not modern
Search function
Department definition such as contact by email and names to directly communicate with the different by law enforcement people needs to be straight forward and not circumvented by having to leave messages.
It looks very bland. It is not engaging. The vey top of the pages are good, but design elements seem to go away when you start scrolling.
I use it for parks and recreation and find it difficult to navigate. I can generally find what I need, but it's not intuitive. I was just on trying to find the get involved kingston webpage (I couldn't remember what it was called) and it was impossible.

Q3 (What website do you you think got things right? Please list the URL (website address) here.)

any website with a strong and rapid Search function
I don't know, I don't go to other city's websites
www.calgary.ca/home
City of Toronto is not bad
Recycle & Garbage is good.
https://www.kitchener.ca/en/index.aspx ; https://carletonplace.ca/index.php. Not city website but easy to find info: https://www.grainger.ca/en, https://www.mcmaster.com/, wikipedia.ca
https://www.nyc.gov/
Especially the navigation - https://ionic.io/
Shopify
There are lots of them but in the minority are those who have direct and clear email communication with department HEADS.
https://www.nevadacountyca.gov

Q5 (On a scale of 0-10, how likely is that you would recommend this website to a friend or colleague as a source of information? For this scale, 0 = very unlikely and 10 = very likely.) Statement 1