Government of Yukon audit workbook instructions
ECO communications
Updated: April 2017
Contents
About Government of Yukon website audits
Audit tools and skills
Webtrends
Microsoft Excel
Audit workbook
Government of Yukon Style Guide
Writing for the Government of Yukon website
Begin your website audit
User research workbook instructions
Getting your data from Webtrends
Filter your results
Export your Webtrends analytics report
Sort your data and delete pages you don’t need
How do I audit French pages?
Combine duplicate pages
Interpreting the web analytics data columns
Number of unique page visits
Page views
Entry page visits
Average time viewed (in seconds)
Bounce rate
Fill out the User need analysis columns
Related search phrases (Keywords)
Topic
Sub-topic
User need statement
Does this page fulfil the user need statement? If Yes, how and if No, then why?
Recommendation (Keep, delete, consolidate, other)
Page audit worksheet instructions
Date audited
Page file name (URL) and Page title columns
Page description
Page keywords
Content observations
Does the page content fulfill its user need statement?
Images
Last updated
Broken links
Applications and tools
Present your recommendations to your branches and program areas
Audit implementation workshops
About Government of Yukon website audits
The 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 skills
Webtrends
You will need a WebTrends account to pull together the analytics for your projects. Department website managers will coordinate account creation with eServices by contacting .
Microsoft Excel
You need basic Microsoft Excel spreadsheet knowledge to complete the audit workbook.
Audit workbook
The latest version of the audit workbook can be found on our Writing for the Government of Yukon webpage -
Government of Yukon Style Guide
The 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 -
Writing for the Government of Yukon website
This 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 -
Begin your website audit
There are two worksheets in the Government of Yukon website audit workbook.
- User research. This worksheetfocuses 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.
- 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 (
User research workbook instructions
The 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 Webtrends
- Log in to Webtrends v10 –
- Select Profiles from the left-hand menu.
- 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.
- Set the date range to a minimum of 365 days.
- Add the date range you have selected in Webtrends to the User researchworksheet in the Analytics date range:field at the top of the page.
- Add the date you audited the project in the Date website audit was conducted: field in the User research worksheet.
- Now that you have selected a profile, you will look to the Reportsleft-hand menu. Click Content to expand the menu and then click Site Pages. Your report will populate the screen.
- 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 results
Sometimes 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 - 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 report
- Select the Export reporticon and select Download CSV.
- Click the box with the download file name and save your report.
- 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.
- Copy the data to the audit workbook.
- Click on cell A1. Press Ctrl Ato select all of the data.
- Click Ctrl Cto copy the cells you’ve selected.
- Paste the data to your audit workbook. In the workbook, click on cell A6to select it. Click Ctrl Vto paste.
Sort your data and delete pages you don’t need
You 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.
- Click on cell A6
- Click the Data tab
- Select Sort
- Sort by Page file name (URL). Ensure Sort On is set to Values and Order is set to A to Z. Click OK.
- Scroll down the page and you will see a cluster of entries with in the page file name (URL). Highlight the first row by clicking the row number. This will highlight the entire row.
- Scroll down the page to the last entry. Press the Shift keyand click the row number. Right click and select delete.
- 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.
- Click cell A6
- Click the Data tab
- Select Sort
- Sort by Number of visits. EnsureSort On is set to Values and Order is set to Largest to Smallest. Click OK.
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 pages
Many 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
- Add the number of unique page visits together and update that column.
- Add the number of page views together and update that column.
- Add entry page visits together and update that column.
- Calculate the combined average time viewed in seconds
- 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.)
- Calculate the combined average bounce rate
- 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.)
Interpreting the web analytics data columns
Now 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 visits
This 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 the URL and request it be deleted from the server.
Page views
Page 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 visits
Entry 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 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 rate
The 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 pagesreport on the page in question. You will be able to see where the visitor went after they left a particular page.
- Select Pages: Next from the Content section of the left-hand menu.
- 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.