Maintain

Maintain home page

Web usability refers to the ease of use of a website. Sites with high usability have intuitive architecture, clean visual design, and well-written text. They make it easy for visitors to find information and complete tasks, and they increase staff productivity by reducing phone, email, and in-person questions from the public.

What Hennepin County does to promote usability

The Hennepin.us website was created based on standard user-centered design principles. The web team continually evaluates site content to ensure it meets the needs of all site visitors.

How to analyze the usability of your content

Web metrics

Web metrics using Google Analytics can show how many people have visited your content, how long they stayed, the paths they took to get to your content, and the key words they used to find it.

To run your own metrics

  1. You will need to have a Google email account (Gmail). If you do not have an account, you can create one for free at google.com/mail.
  2. Send an email to web tech asking for access to Google Analytics. You will need to provide your Gmail address. We will then send you log-in information.
  3. Log-in to Google Analytics at www.google.com/analytics using your Gmail address and your new log-in password.
  4. Gather metrics on your content (PDF 98KB).

Training

For training on how to gather and interpret your own metrics, see the training page.

To have the web team run metrics for you

  • Send an email to the web team with links to the content that you want analyzed. We will provide a report and explain the results within two weeks of receiving the request.

What to do if users are not finding your content

Usability testing

Usability testing involves having potential users of the website perform a set of tasks on the site while being observed. Research shows that you can test with as few as five people, as long as they accurately represent your target audience. Public Affairs has done and will continue to do testing on the overarching Hennepin.us website.

Surveys

Well-written surveys can help answer questions about how your content is used. However, we recommend using surveys only as an additional usability measure after performing metrics and/or usability testing because of limitations inherent in web surveys (e.g., most respondents self-select).

  • For help with creating surveys contact the web team.