Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
A tale of two Council website home-pages
I'VE RECENTLY made visits to the Borough of Sutton in south London, where the Liberal Democrat Party have just won a by-election. The most obvious difference with Haringey is the state of the streets: Sutton's are noticeably cleaner!
However, one difference between the Boroughs can be compared from anywhere in the world: and that is the home pages of the Councils' respective websites. For ease of comparison, I've put them side-by-side and same-size:
Haringey
Sutton
(click to enlarge: un-retouched screen-shot from 30" screen)
Haringey's home page appears bitty and cluttered. Our council tries to force everything into the first view, whereas the Liberal Democrat Council's home page is scrollable. I suggest the services are better laid out in the latter. Sutton's first view also focuses better on the resident-user who wants to report a problem and to get it fixed.
A Borough's home-page is it's face to the world.
Couldn't we do as well as Sutton?
If not, at least better than our present effort?
______________________________
Council home page: Haringey
Council home page: Sutton
_______________________
Councillor and
Liberal Democrat
__________________________________________________________________________________
P.S. Update above to reflect changes 2015-09-21 to Haringey's website (screenshots captured within seconds of each other—click to enlarge).
Tags for Forum Posts: Council, Haringey, Sutton, home page, web page
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
-
Alan, my note about today's revamped home page can be found here.
It seems the way the minimalist logo is used, may be to reflect a diminished Council, that is in retreat from a range of activities … except the most prized ones of PR, image and branding.
On the other hand, the Council may actually have taken notice of my suggestion higher up in this thread where I suggested that,
Sutton's home page seems more resident-focused: the message seems to be, right now, what do you want the Council to do?
What do you want to do today? is front and centre, for which I give them credit. However, from being too cluttered, Haringey may have erred on the other side a little.
-
Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
-
I'm sure they took on board your suggestions Clive but I think some credit should also be given to the people who did some work with the website developers testing ideas for how the site could look and function. I was one of them and I'm sure there were a number of others too.
-
-
THE revamped page seems not to conform with some of the design precepts you mentioned earlier:
The problem with websites with a scrolling home page is that they are very difficult for someone with a visual impairment to navigate using software that reads the screen and converts it to audio. The technology just doesn't know that there is more off the screen. That is one reason a lot of public websites go to great pains to keep all the information on a single screen on the home page.
Because the new home page has a full-window photo and there are buttons at the foot of one's browser window, it is not obvious that it scrolls to reveal (much) more information.
That LBH's new home page does scroll, is less obvious than the scrolling web page of Sutton (above, top). I think the page needs more work and user testing.
When the excitement of the new style has died down and the new logo is eventually seen as tawdry, it will need to be replaced (though the Council still shouldn't afford it).
-
-
Perhaps you could let Haringey know that. I was one of the testers, not the designer.
-
-
Permalink Reply by James R Grinter on
-
At least the front page is readable on mobile, but I'm not sure about some of the 'jaunty' images. Or the tilted "+"
-
-
-
I've just looked at the front page again. You don't need to scroll. The four main links take you to more content.
-
-
Permalink Reply by Zena Brabazon on
-
I followed a link to the website and pressed the button for services to residents, which took me to children and families. Out of curiosity I tried to find nursery classes in schools. Only two nursery schools are listed on the page, although there are nursery classes in almost all Haringey primaries and there are three nursery schools. I'm not very skilled at IT and I shouldn't have to go hunting round to find such key information. I did finally track something down,bu tit is clunky and not that easy to find. And this is for a service people really need. I thought all this channel shift was to supposed to make information accessible so people could find things easily for themselves.
I think there is lots more work to do - who knows what that will cost, since the new website cost isn't included in the 'I am in' report which had a table of costs included.
Zena Brabazon
-
-
Permalink Reply by pamish on
-
zena i hope you fed this back via the feedback bit of the page - there must be thousands of web pages for them to check through. I do try to do the Good Citizen thing and report such errors. eg yesterday the whole Planning portal was down, the day they published the plans for SpursCity. Emailed them and it's back, and i got an acknowledgement email.
-
-
-
Zena and Pam - your thread was full so couldn't add to it.
I think two things are being mixed up. The look and navigation of the website has been changed (and in my view improved) but the content which probably runs to many thousands of pages, is more or less the same. I think it's easier to get to the information I need but the information remains much the same, good in some areas and scant in others. The content is probably largely down to the services themselves so they need a bit of a rocket under them if it's not good enough so feedback is a very good idea.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next ›
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
