The way the Web works

By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio

Agencies have had Web sites for at least a decade, but those sites have to constantly evolve.

Anybody who has undertaken a site redesign knows it can be an arduous process.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently went through that process and the results have been getting very good reviews.

On Thursday’s Daily Debrief, hosts Christopher Dorobek and Amy Morris spoke with Jeffrey Levy, the EPA’s director of Web communications, who says the agency went through the process for the first time in 2001.

Mostly what’s changed is our understanding of how people use our website and what we wanted to accomplish with it. In 2001, the design was very much about getting our news releases out and us telling the world what we wanted to tell them. What’s changed in the last couple of years — it’s been very clear, particularly with social networking and social media, that people really want to do what they want to do.

This, Levy says, led to a paradigm shift in the way EPA had to use its Web site.

For the designers, it became less about the message of the agency and more about helping people get the information they were looking for.

During the design process, we identified . . . up to 13 different audiences — researchers, students, people who work for a company and have to keep track of what they need to do to comply with our regulations — that sort of thing. We thought about what are each of those groups trying to accomplish on our Web site — and then we wanted to focus on making it easier for them to get those things done.

Levy gives the example of the citizen who trolls EPA’s site looking for how he can personally help protect the environment.

So, we have a whole box [now] about getting involved. We found, on our old site . . . that people were constantly looking for job information and how they can join our effort. So we’ve got a whole section that talks about that.

The site designers also had less daunting tasks they wanted to accomplish through the redesign.

Working well was never a question — it had to do that — but we also wanted to make sure it looked like a modern design. Another thing for us — although we did reduce greatly the amount of information that we’re putting out about ourselves, we do still have a need to educate the public about the major campaigns we’re doing [and] make major announcements. So we have these rotating four photos now that give us the opportunity to have more than one picture at the top of the page to help people understand some of the things we’re doing.

As for the homepage, the mentality behind the content hasn’t changed. Levy says a good Web manager has the ability to say no when content that doesn’t warrant prime real estate is presented.

We really focus on putting things on the homepage that are going to appeal to a large audience. Really small technical details of rules and things — those go on appropriate Web pages, but they don’t belong on the homepage. We’re fortunate here [that] we have a really strong Web governance structure. We’re supported by senior management here that really reflects that idea that the homepage is for stuff that’s going to be of the largest interest for the most people.

Levy says there were some surprises along the way. The old design featured a page called Recent Editions. Traffic for that particular page wasn’t very high, so the designers removed it from the new site. This action made some users very upset.

Boy did we hear from that audience! So that feature went back up within about two days of launching the new design. It’s been a nice surprise how positive the feedback has been. I really didn’t know how people were going to react.

One of the overall lessons Levy says he’s learned? You can never please 100 percent of an audience all the time.

We can get literally two emails within 30 seconds of each other — one of them saying, “This is the best government Web site I’ve ever seen!” and the next one saying, “This is awful! I can’t find anything!” But, you know, that’ll happen.

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Overall, Levy says the site designers take criticisms seriously and work to see if they can solve the problems.

There’s a transition that’s going to happen for anybody who had been using our site — and we want to help them make that transition as easy as possible.

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On the Web:

EPA – http://www.epa.gov/

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