According to Marketing ...
City favours search style over drilling down through endless menus
Log on to the City of Calgary’s new website and you won’t see the usual text-heavy, drill-down-the-tree-to-the-roots site favored by most governments.
The new $3.2 million website launched Monday is built around a Google search application and utilizes keywords that allow users to quickly access city information and programs, said David Watson, general manager, planning, development and assessment, and project sponsor.
Read the rest here http://bit.ly/qPmmKn
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Well I read it, with interest, and went to the site.
I tried a half dozen quick searches - the obvious ones (to me at least) - jobs, music, kids, dogs and golf. The results I guess were ok? But what I experienced was ... why can't I just have a proper user experience and use the well established science of heuristics to allow me to find what I want? This is not a social call to the City of Calgary. I would guess no one will say Hey lets be wild and crazy! lets go search the City of Calgary for stuff - I probably want something specific and I probably know what it is? (Events, Licenses, Departments, Kids stuff, Parking etc etc ) I will not be going to the City of calgary site for shits and giggles. For that I use Stumbleupon ...
Has web development become so "old fashioned" that we can't do this anymore? And 3.2 mil for a search structure? Come on!
I have built dozens of sites with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pages ... it ain't that tough. This has been done before with many city portals and quite successfully.
This is the ultimate in self serve. But instead of eliminating the hassle you introduce the "WTF!"
In banking for decades we have had ATMs. Great perfect. At the gas pump - self serve - again perfect, but here in every search all I was left with was ... "Is that really what I wanted to find?" Because quite frankly when I am going to a city site I kind of know what I am looking for - a department, a phone number or at least a site that gives me the hours of an event etc etc
This just does not work for me.
If it worked so seamlessly, then why would they put a banner "I need help using calgary.ca" and yet another search button...
Sorry - calling bullshit on this one.
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