Congratulations! This is a free usability review from UsabilityInstitute.com. "Usability" refers to how easy and effective it is to use a Web site. Although it involves how a site looks (graphic artwork), it is primarily concerned with how a site works, what you click on, what happens, and whether the site does its job. Perhaps this review is all you need to improve your site. If that's the case, great. Please mention UsabilityInstitute.com if you talk with others who need help with their site.

The following three sections provide a general analysis of your website from a relatively quick review. Although Web design is still perceived as a highly creative endeavor, there are many aspects of it that call for standardization and compliance with widely established conventions. Implementing even a few of the ideas below can really improve a site.

	Part 1: Content Basics
			This first section is intended for typical public web sites (for products and corporate information), but also applies for the most part to intranets and software applications that run in a browser. We've been advocating many of these ideas—in the context of general software—since our 1997 book, Computers Stink, but they've been beautifully enumerated for WWW purposes in Steve Krug's book, "Don't Make Me Think."
			Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
		1.	Logo in top left, linked to home		As I find on many sites, it's on all pages but not linked back to the home page.
		2.	Tagline		Yes, "Working in Partnership..."
		3.	Welcome blurb		Not applicable. Everyone who finds the site intentionally knows it's a local government site.
		4.	Plain wording
		5.	No 'happy talk'
		6.	Concise wording
		7.	Visited pages are distinguished by link color-coding		Standard purple
		8.	"Utilities" are easy to find		Top right and bottom of every page
		9.	Search on all pages, with box and button		Consider adding some javascript to make the word "Search" disappear when the visitor clicks in it.
		10.	"You Are Here" indicator		This is the starting point for what turns out to be the only real clear-cut weakness of the site. After you click Residents, the word Residents should be differentiated or perhaps have an arrow or dot next to it. Same for the second row of items, such as Water/Sewer. See http://www.tredyffrin.org/boards/. They use white backgrounds.   This is compounded by an item that I don't even have as a checklist item: page titles. When you click Residents>Water/Sewer, the page title is "James City Service Authority Water and Wastewater Treatment for the County." It wasn't until using the site for quite a while that we (my daughter was the tester) realized that the page titles were above (!) the navigation, in the banner area. They were unnoticable because 1) they included additional, constant text, and 2) they were above, not below the item clicked. One expects changes to be below where you take action. Only a few pages have page titles in the body of the pages and it's not consistent to the item clicked. Employment leads to "Employment Opportunities." (I'm not usually a purist, insisting that the words match exactly. But here, page titles aren't even routinely displayed.)
		11.	Breadcrumbs' as links		For instance, breadcrumb links would say Home>Residents>Water/Sewer. Again see http://www.tredyffrin.org/boards/ for an example.

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Part 2: Visual Design: Fonts, Colors, Layout, Basic Interaction Design, and Accessibility
As we read in a graphic artist's ad, "Technology makes it work but art makes it sell," and you should take heed. We're not graphic artists here at Uinst, but we know good art when we see it and the common denominators that separate good pages from bad are clear. Look at the top sites and you'll see they spell out the following criteria.
	Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
1.	Sans-serif fonts
2.	Appropriate background color
3.	Appropriate color hues
4.	Visual representation of the information hierarchy		This is mainly accomplished by the two-row navigation. For a local government siter, there's not a strong visual aspect to the hierarchy.
5.	Conservative quantity of colors		Might be room for a graphic artist to have his or her say. The green/red borders on the subpages isn't ideal, and a few pages accumulate more color on table rollovers and right-side navigation.
6.	Text sizes are "relative"		Yes, when you use the browser text size function, the letters enlarge. It could use some HTML layout work to make the letters fit.
7.	Anti-aliased graphics
8.	Graphics' file size doesn't slow navigation
9.	"Alt tags" used well		I didn't see any on any pictures. For instance, on employee photos, their names should be in the rollover text.
10.	Links don't just say "Click Here"		Lots of links are correctly nouns and verbs.
11.	A style sheet (CSS) is used

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Part 3: Genuine Value: Useful Content & Critical Interaction Design
And now for the hard part. If all of good Web design were as clear-cut as parts 1 & 2, above, you wouldn't need much judgment and there would be a lot more good sites. But the easier the decisions are, the less significant the thinking and effort behind them... and the easier it would be to provide useful content. This section is where you make or break your rapport with the visitor. If you provide real value and give folks enough tools to get to it, they will push past the basic omissions and ignore even the most amateurish art.
	Click for explanation		Hover for explanation	Comments
1.	Questions are answered		I searched for info on whether I could burn leaves and found it immediately. I don't suggest that this simple test is conclusive, but the site shows signs of having lots of info.
2.	Search results get the job done
3.	Effective 'click tree'		The two-row main navigation is effective. There are some challenges though: 1) the various sub-sites to which the site links, but this is an unavoidable challenge for any government site. 2) Tthe "More" links call for more study. 3) Some choices, like "Employment" CHANGE THE TOP NAVIGATION BAR. It isn't until you study it a little that you know it has changed and you're in a sub-site with different navigation. This could be surmounted by changing the color of the navigation bar, but only if that's the only option.
4.	Conceptual flow from upper left to lower right		Yes
5.	Simple, outline-like site map		It's there, but hidden on the search page, upstaged by the ABC order listing. Furthermore, the site map isn't really a site map but a short list of only the topmost navigation options. The importance of an outline like site map is to give visitors a chance to understand the overall organization at a glance.
6.	Primary navigation is obvious		Yes
7.	Secondary navigation is obvious		This doesn't refer to the second row of the menu but the links on the left side. More study could determine what is needed.
8.	Contact information easily accessible
9.	Links are clear
10.	Intro panel or animation not excessive
11.	Graphics used only for core message

Summation & Next Steps

Overall Rating: Strives / Survives / Thrives

Recommendations:

1. When the user clicks on the top navigation items, don't change the top navigation labels. For instance, when they click Employment the labels change as if the whole site is different.
2. Add "you are here" indication to the top navigation, arrows or color change.
3. Put page titles on every page right below the navigation.
4. If possible, add breadcrumbs, but the this is just another form of "you are here" info with a slight categorical form of navigation added. Not urgent.
5. Add an exhaustive site map, indented to match the hierarchy. Add it to the top right links.
6. Have a graphic artist simplify the palette a little.
7. Try to clean up text layout when the user enlarges text.
8. Note: when trying to select text, such as the title of the Water/Sewer page, it selected everything but what I dragged over. See if you can support routine text selection.

Hope this helps and let me know what you think,
Jack Bellis, UsabilityInstitute.com