Website Assesment

Website Assessment

September 2020

Version 1.6

NOTICE: Proprietary and Confidential

This material is proprietary to The Fulton County City of Atlanta Landbank. It contains trade secrets and confidential information which is solely the property of The Fulton County City of Atlanta Landbank. This material is solely for internal use. This material shall not be used, reproduced, copied, disclosed, transmitted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of The Fulton County City of Atlanta Landbank. © 2020

PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary ...................................................................................... 2 2. Website Index................................................................................................. 3 3. Website Analytics Summary ........................................................................ 4 4. eProperty Analytics Summary ..................................................................... 5 5. Content Quality Evaluation .......................................................................... 6 6. Usability and Navigation Evaluation ........................................................... 8 7. User Performance & Security Evaluation................................................. 10 8. Stakeholder Use Cases Evaluation ........................................................... 11 8.1 General Research........................................................................................... 14

8.2 Program Research.......................................................................................... 14

8.3 Inventory Research ........................................................................................ 15

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1. Executive Summary

This website assessment of Fccalandbank.org analyzes 38 standard characteristics of the website across three categories:

Content Quality

• • • •

Usability and Navigation

User Performance and Security

Stakeholder Use Cases

We reviewed every page available to navigate on the website either manually or with a tool that automatically crawls and assesses a specific characteristic. Each characteristic was then evaluated with a Yes (Y) or No (N) as an indicator of meeting the standard. Although, in some cases, only 1 or 2 instances of a standard where non-conforming out of many, it may still be marked with a No if the instances where deemed as highly impactful to the user.

Overall, the site graded out with a score of 37%, satisfactorily conforming to 14 out of the 38 measured characteristics:

Use Case

Conforming Non-Conforming

Total Standards

Score

Content Quality

10%

Usability and Navigation

50%

User Performance and Security Stakeholder Use Cases

80%

31%

Total

37%

In each of the three sections below you will find a more detailed explanation of the characteristics of the website that were assessed as well as a specific recommendation to remediate the 24 non- conforming standards.

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2. Website Index

This website index represents a summary of the content navigation on the website.

1. Home 1.1. Executive Director Welcome Message 2. About us 2.1. Organization Overview

2.1.1.What is a Land Bank? 2.1.2.Why have a Land Bank?

2.2. Mission Statement 2.2.1.Missing – No mission statement found within this link 2.3. Board of Directors 2.4. Staff 2.5. Interlocal Agreement 2.5.1.Missing – No Interlocal Agreement found within this link 2.6. Certificate of Incorporation 2.6.1. Missing – No Certificate of Incorporation found within this link 2.7. Articles of Incorporation 2.7.1. Missing – No Articles of Incorporation found within this link 2.8. By-laws 2.8.1. Missing – No By-laws found within this link 2.9. Partners

2.9.1.Major Stakeholders 2.9.2.Business Partners 2.9.3.Community Partners

3. Programmatic Initiatives 3.1. LBA Application 3.2. Tax Abatement 3.3. Land Banking

3.4. Community Land Trust 3.4.1. Missing – No community land trust information found within this link 4. Publications and Research 4.1. Related Articles 4.2. Presentations 4.2.1. Missing – No presentations found within this link 5. Inventory 5.1. Available Properties 5.1.1.Property Inventory (Pop-up link to third party site) 6. Contact Us 6.1. Staff Contact 6.2. Directions

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3. Website Analytics Summary

Summary of website traffic data on Fccalandbank.org

Top 5 pages for website traffic 1. Property Inventory 2. Tax abatement 3. Board of Directors 4. Staff 5. Calendar

•

• 2020 Monthly Traffic averages between 1,000 and 1,500 unique visitors as of 8/24/2020.

• Hourly traffic peak between 9am and 3pm

Daily traffic peaks on Thursdays

•

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4. eProperty Analytics Summary

Summary of Top 10 Properties on eProperty.com • 6 are residential vacant lots • 4 are residential improved • The most popular neighborhood was Pittsburgh with 4 properties. No other neighborhood had more than 1 property.

Rank Type

Neighborhood

URL

Residential Vacant

Pittsburgh

https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0086-0007-051- 4&fromHome=true https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0087-0006-040-7 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0087-0006-012-6 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=13-0002-0001-015-8 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0087-0008-026-4 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0117-0006-096-3 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0176-0005-020-2 https://public- fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=1520802109

Residential Improved

Pittsburgh

Residential Improved

Pittsburgh

Residential Vacant

Unknown

Residential Improved

Pittsburgh

Residential Vacant

West End

Residential Vacant

Grove Park

Residential Improved

Edgewood

Residential Vacant

English Avenue https://public-

fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=14-0083-0004-094-0

Residential Vacant

Scotts Crossing https://public-

fcca.epropertyplus.com/landmgmtpub/remote/public/prop erty/viewSummary?parcelNumber=17-0245-0001-031-3

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5. Content Quality Evaluation

Quality content is what separates good websites from great websites. It’s what helps your site rank well in search engines, naturally attract other inbound links on other popular websites, and most importantly build trust and credibility with your audience.

While the definition of “quality” changes depending on industry and target audience, this assessment uses the characteristics which are the de facto standard among industry analyst to indicate the quality of a websites content.

Overall, your website received a content quality score of 10%. This is calculated based on having 1 out of the 10 standard characteristics measured. We recommend you enhance your website with the following characteristic:

• Answers to common questions are buried in the content. Create an overall FAQ page and include it in the main navigation. • Consider adding at least one high quality professional video related to your mission and featuring it on your homepage. • Add high definition photos of real residents and neighborhoods (not stock photos) to your homepage and throughout your site. • Create a Privacy Policy and include it in your global footer. Privacy Policies and often Terms of Use are considered a best practice. • On the home page include a section that displays the logos of your prominent partners. This enhances your sites credibility and helps first time visitors build trust with your site. • The content is not up to date. The newest related article is from 2009, and there are no current events or any indication that the site is relevant in 2020. Consider adding a blog with content updated at least monthly to ensure there is always updated content.

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Y/N

# Characteristic

Unique and aesthetically appealing branding

Credibility building logos from clients & partners

Videos to catch people’s attention

4 Photos of real residents and properties displayed throughout your site

Informative headlines, bullets, and use of bold text

6 Content is written with common language that users easily understand.

All content is useful and up-to-date

8 A site wide FAQ is provided to quickly answers to the most common questions

There is a Privacy Policy

10 Use of proper grammar and spelling

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6. Usability and Navigation Evaluation

The most scientific method to measure a w ebsite’s usability is to organize a formal study of a group of users ’ performance on a given set of test tasks. Then measure the usability as a quality of specific metrics such as:

• success rate (whether users can perform the task at all), • the time a task requires, • the error rate, and • users' subjective satisfaction.

It is recommended to commission a scientific usability assessment like this if your website is particularly critical to your bottom line such as in an ecommerce site. This type of assessment is out of scope for this document.

We instead measure the non-scientific characteristics of usability particularly dealing with navigation and how common users expect to interact with the websites the visit most often. Overall, your website received a usability and navigation score of 50%. This is calculated based on having 5 out of the 10 standard characteristics measured. We recommend the following to improve the usability and navigation on your site: • Put a global search bar on the top of page the crawls entire site • There are number of links that don’t provide the information described in the link text. (see website index in section 2) • Most pages on your site are built with a top-level navigation and a sub-level navigation. Therefore, it’s possible for u sers to get buried multiple level deep in a specific sub-section and get lost within the site. To resolve this issue, we recommend adding a “bread crumbs” navigation feature to the top header of the site. • The main navigation on each page disappears once you scroll down the midpoint of a page. There is a significant amount content on most of your web pages, as a result we recommend you use a “ sticky ” or fixed navigation menu that is always pinned to the top of the user’s browser no matter how far down the pa ge a user scrolls.

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Y/N

Characteristic

1 Most important links and information above the fold

Search bar at top of page

3 Search is available on every page, not just the homepage

4 Site is responsive. Works with different screen sizes

Y Y Y Y N N N

There is a minimum amount of pop-up windows

6 Page layouts are consistent across the whole website.

7 8 9

There is enough white space to support scanning.

Users know where they are on the site.

There are no broken links

10 Main navigation does not disappear when user scrolls down the page

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7. User Performance & Security Evaluation

This final section of our assessment covers the front-end performance and security characteristics of your web site from your user’s perspective . Data security, server security, as well as load and stress testing are out of scope for this assessment.

Overall, your website received a front-end performance and security score of 80%. This is calculated based on having 4 out of the 5 standard characteristics measured.

We only have one recommendation in this section, purchase and install a SSL certificate on your site so your website address defaults to https instead of http. HTTPS is now the expected standard for all websites. The “s” at the end of the “http” part of a URL means that your user’s network connection to your website is secured with encryption. A significant number of people who browse the web are now aware when a site provides this type of security and may become concerned when you don’t. In addition, search engines are beginning to prioritize SSL secured sites over non-secured sites in search results.

Y/N

# Characteristic

Site Load-time Is Reasonable

URL Site URL works with or without www.

Site works in various browsers.

Site has an SSL certificate

Site has custom 404 and 500 error pages

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8. Stakeholder Use Cases Evaluation

The stakeholder use case assessment analyzes the standard characteristics of a user completing a process across three use cases:

1. User researching information about landbanks in General 2. User researching information about specific landbank programs 3. User researching the landbank inventory

Overall, your website received a stakeholder use case score of 31%. This is calculated based on having 4 out of the 13 standard characteristics measured. Specific recommendations follow.

• Although there is an information page with general information to learn about land banking, the navigation text in the top menu is vague and does not have a specific call to action to learn more. On the page below, rather than just state “Land Banking” we suggest it say, “ Learn More About The Land Banking Program ” or something as specific.

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• In addition, on the page above we suggest adding graphics, additional headers and sub-headers to help support quick scanning and the ability for users to drill down to the sections that are important for them. • On the page below, users are requested to contact the staff to get access to a application form. We recommend this form be made available without adding this extra step.

• In general, the program pages where extremely light on information. Also, the link to the community land trust page does not work and thus has no information. We recommend you make each of the program pages more robust by adding: o Examples of how the program works o Highlights of past success stories for each program o At least one detailed case study

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• Each program page required the user to contact the staff for more information. We recommend the use of an online form that users could submit to request more information about the specific program they have interest. • The property inventory page on the main website requires user to call or email questions. We recommend using an online form to handle these requests.

• On each of the property inventory pages, it states applications are not currently being accepted while also stating the property is for sale. This is a confusing message that should be reconciled.

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8.1 General Research

Use Case: As a person who is not already aware of what a landbank is or the benefits of a landbank, I am visiting the website specifically to educate myself.

Y/N

Characteristic

1 Do the graphics and architecture on the page encourage users to learn what a landbank is and the benefits of a landbank? 2 Can a user get detailed information on what a landbank is and the benefits in 2 navigation clicks or less? 3 Is there enough white space to support scanning with Informative bold headers, sub sections, and use graphics to simply complex information?

4 Does a FAQ provide quick answers to the most common questions for people who want to learn about landbanks? N

8.2 Program Research

Use Case: As a person who is already aware of what a landbank is and the benefits of a landbank, I am visiting the website specifically to find out about a program.

Y/N

Characteristic

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1 Do the graphics and architecture on the page encourage users to learn about the landbank programs? 2 Can a user get detailed information on landbank programs in 2 navigation clicks or less? 3 Is there enough white space to support scanning with Informative bold headers, sub sections, and use graphics to simply complex information

4 Does a FAQ provide quick answers to the most common questions for people who want to learn about landbanks? N

5 Is there an online form for user to complete to request more information or apply for a program?

8.3 Inventory Research

Use Case: As a person who is already aware of what a landbank is and the benefits of a landbank, I am visiting the website specifically to research the inventory.

Y/N

Characteristic

1 Do the graphics and architecture on the page encourage users to research the inventory?

2 Can a user research the inventory in 2 navigation clicks or less?

3 Does a FAQ provide quick answers to the most common questions for people researching the inventory? 4 Is there an online form for user to complete to request more information about the inventory?

Website Assessment

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