Sutherland Shire Council Web Project: a case study

have you ever checked the social media presence of a candiate you were considering hiring?

You've engaged in the reputation economy

task focussed,

user-centric content

Meaningful contact details for all content

Where are we heading?

Questions?

Find me online

mboyce@ssc.nsw.gov.au

twitter: @boycetrus

Google+: Martin Boyce

ramblibrarian.blogspot.com

Use of social media to listen and engage - not just broadcast messages

Hitwise

...Government websites received more traffic from Social Networking and Forums than the online News and Media industry for the first time during August 2009.

Reputation & Trust

Sutherland Shire Council Web Project

a Case Study

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/sandra-hanchard/2009/09/government_sites_receive_more.html

Eighty-one per cent of Australian respondents said they do not trust information from a company CEO, and just six per cent trust corporate advertising.

2009 Edelman Trust Barometer

http://www.edelman.com.au/insights/2009EdelmanTrustBarometer.htm

Sutherland Shire Council

Trust allows you to do things you might not otherwise be able to do

PC World 01/09/2009

Adele Ezzy, Manager Online and business Development

aezzy@ssc.nsw.gov.au

Paul Parton, Senior Online Administrator

pparton@ssc.nsw.gov.au

Council's reputation in the community?

Created an Intranet first: learn by our mistakes

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/316894/consumer_talk_cloud_about_poor_customer_care_impacts_bottom_line

...nearly a quarter (23%) of online-Australians have boycotted an organisation after reading a negative comment on the social web about how that organisation treats its customers.

Phase 2: redesign our website

evidence from focus groups -

too hard to complain

never get to speak to the right person

This work by Martin Boyce is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Worked with Step Two Designs to define requirements and select a CMS

www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au

Listening is vital

"We either ignore your brand or we judge it, usually with too little information. And when we judge it, we judge it based on the actions of the loudest, meanest, most selfish member of your tribe."

Seth Godin. The worst voice of the brand *is* the brand

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/the-worst-voice-of-the-brand-is-the-brand.html

Old site

how did we know our content was failing?

be clear about what do you want your website to do for you

Top Tip #2

Save time and money through reduced telephone and in person customer service - 'outsource the data entry'

Build council's reputation and trust in the community

Don't be afraid of making mistakes

top tip #3

Do have a plan for dealing with them

one of the things we did right was ask for feedback on every page in the site

our users told us where the content wasn't satisfying their needs

Our content didn't support our objectives

Didn't focus on the task

Not user focussed

old site...

information source

not user focused

Objectives

user focused

tree testing

activity based

card sorting

UK examples

top tip #1

be realistic about setting your scope - and you'll probably need to reduce it further as you go

your website doesn't end on the launch date - you are allowed to keep working on it

set realistic scope

technical capability

timeframe