4 September 2024
We are working through the most popular sections on our website, making it more accessible, easier to use and understand.
The libraries section was one of these.
Before we start redesigning a section we do a content discovery, this involves a full content audit and analysing feedback and data. We also try and talk to users and staff. This helps us to decide which areas need the most focus. For the library section we spoke to users in library buildings to find out more about what they are doing and what they might find difficult when using online services.
We also asked staff who work in libraries which parts of the website they felt might cause issues for users.
One element that had a trend of negative feedback, from users and staff was the library events calendar.
The library events calendar was a Google calendar that lists the events and activities happening in libraries.
The problem
From talking to users and staff, it became clear that the Google calendar lacked some basic functionality that people expected.
Search and filter function
Users wanted to be able to search by activity or library. Some users are happy to travel to other libraries for that activity. Other users wanted to be able to see all the activities at their local library.
“can be difficult trying to pinpoint activities at a specific library as events listing is for all libraries”
“expected activities to be listed in the children’s section”
“it would be good to filter the activity list by a specific library”
Mobile experience
Over 65% of our users are using a mobile or tablet device to access our website. The calendar provided a useable experience on desktop, but it was difficult to use on a mobile device.
Governance
All libraries had access to add or amend events in the calendar. There was no central control or oversight for the events. This created inconsistencies and a perceived lack of quality with the events. The same event could be named something different depending on which library had set it up.
Solution
Our website upgrade added built in events functionality. After some initial experimenting the solution appeared to be a suitable replacement for the Google calendar.
It had the ability to search, filter, link to filters, add images and have pages for events. It has different views so the user can choose their preferred layout. Users can select a more visual layout with images for each event or a long list that was similar to the original Google calendar.
As the native events module was built into the website, any events would also be searchable from the main website search.
We could create links to specific searches allowing people to access the events calendar from multiple locations. For example, from individual library pages and the children’s services pages.
Challenges with new solution
There was no method of automatically ‘porting’ over the Google events to the website events. We had to manually re-create over 100 events. We worked with the service to catalogue and create a spreadsheet of all the events.
We noticed there were some bugs, particularly around recurring events which would later influence our standards and methods. For example, if 2 events had the same name, sometimes the dates/times of those separate events would merge. We set a standardised naming for events to reduce the risk of events having the same name.
We could only have one events calendar so there was some concern over what to do if other services wanted to use it. We decided to ‘future proof’ the calendar by limiting the number of filter/categories that were libraries related. We could link to the calendar with some search and filters already selected so we could have ‘virtual’ separate calendars by creating links that already had some filters selected such as ‘outdoor events’ that would then hide all the library events.
Our website supplier would later add the ability to create separate calendars, so this is no longer a concern.
Go live
We conducted a ‘phased’ rollout of the library events,
First, any links to the events from the individual library pages would go to the new events system. This allowed us to see the system being used and allow early users to report back on any issues.
Second, we fully rolled out the new events system but also left the old system available in case we needed to roll back to that.
After 2 weeks we were satisfied that the new events system was working well and users preferred it, so we removed the old Google calendar.
Follow up on go live / consistency
Although some initial tidy up was completed when creating the events spreadsheet for the purpose of porting the events over from the Google Calendar, it later became apparent that this was not thorough enough. We now had an extremely long list of linked filter options that were either very similar or the same events but named differently.
The service worked with us to tidy up and merge similar events under a consistent naming scheme to improve the search and filter options.
For example, “work club” and “job club” merged.
The service area also updated event titles and descriptions to better match what the offering was.
We also:
- updated our internal website request form to make it easier to add library events
- drafted a format and agreed with the service area the format for events going forward
User testing
Once we had finished all the changes to the section, we went back to libraries and carried out some top task testing. One of the tasks was to ask participants to find the time and date of rhymetime at their local library. All participants completed this with no problem and found it easy. It was interesting to note that participants accessed the calendar in a variety of different ways, validating the earlier research, that people like to see events by library and by theme.
Outcome
We continued to monitor the analytics of library events as one of the measures of the success of the new website events module. We saw a significant increase in the number of people visiting the library events pages.
There was a 650% increase in page views on the library events pages when comparing July 2022 to July 2023.
We also saw a change in how people access the events page as there was now multiple paths to it. We’ve seen a lot of people first go to the individual library page to then access the link for “Events at X library.”
We don’t have any data on the number of visitors attending events but have seen bookable events sell out quicker.
The service area was extremely happy with the solution and wanted to ‘show it off’ to their users through their social media channels.
Anyone interested in helping us to improve our online services can join our Digital User Panel.