This analysis was part of the Yukon.ca UX assessment project. The vendor we worked with looked at all negative, or thumbs down user feedback people submitted on Yukon.ca in 2023. Before we dive into the analysis - we see an interesting pattern on Yukon.ca where people leaving a thumbs up or positive feedback will often leave a sugestion or way to improve their experience and people who leave negative or thumbs down piece of feedback often have something positive to say. 

User feedback themes for Yukon.ca

After the initial review, the vendor identified the following themes.

• Content themes.
• What people were doing when they submitted feedback.
• Users’ goals.
• Types of problems people reported.
• Pain points they encountered.
• Equity themes.

Content themes

Content themes are the topics of the pages people were on when they submitted their website feedback. These are:

• Health and social services (excluding Covid)
• Housing, building and land
• Recreation
• Justice
• History and nature
• Roads and communities
• Employment
• Current events
• Motor vehicles
• Covid/vaccinations

Digging deeper into user feedback themes

• 32% wanted more information on a topic
• 27% left a compliment (positive feedback)
• 22% reported they could not find something
• 13% reported an error
• Remaining themes were unknown

What people were doing on Yukon.ca when they submitted feedback

• 65% were looking for a piece of information
• 10% wanted to contact the government
• 7% were looking to locate an office or facility
• 5% were looking for a form
• 4% were booking an appointment
• Remaining tasks were unknown.

Users' goals when they come to Yukon.ca

Based on user feedback, people were looking to complete the following types of tasks.

• Apply for something (14%)
• Access news or reports (12%)
• Plan to go somewhere (9%)
• Contact someone (9%)
• Research (8%)
• Access a document (7%)
• Access a service (6%)
• Schedule something (6%)
• Find information about a department (4%)
• Remaining goals were unknown.

Types of problems people reported

• 35% reported a problem related to content
• 30% reported an issue with findability (Navigating the website and using search)
• 24% reported no problems
• 3% reported an issue with a form or application
• The remaining issued were unknown

Pain points people encountered

• 37% tried to access specific information and were unable
• 25% encountered no pain points
• 10% had to do with the website layout
• 10% had to do with broken links
• 7% were related to technical issues they encountered
• 6% came across outdated information
• 3% couldn’t find contact details related to their task
• The remining pain points were unknown.

Equity seeking groups

13.5% of the user feedback (thumbs down) we got was related to finding info or completing tasks for specific equity-seeking groups. These groups included:

• Seniors
• First Nations
• Victims of crime or violence
• People who are new to the Yukon
• People with disabilities
• Children

Summary of findings

This first batch of Yukon.ca assessment research was very interesting. 

Many people were looking for more information on a topic. They might have got to the right page, but it was missing a detail they were looking for. Or maybe the detail was there, but they missed it. This is very helpful information for the people who manage the content in those themed areas. And it fits in well with the Executive Council Office's existing process to review user feedback once a month and share it with department website managers to address or track. So in many of these instances - that feedback has been addressed.

Another interesting thing were the positive comments that came in via the negative feedback. This is an example of a person who did this. They got to the correct page and encountered a typo or broken link. It didn't impact their overall experience, but they wanted to let us know.

For people who reported the could not find something we know we have to improve two things.

1. Search results. At the moment news releases and documents tend to rank higher in the search results than information pages. We have implemented a variety of solutions (updating page descriptions, making sure content on information pages is updated frequently) and there has been some improvement. This fall we will have completed migrating Yukon.ca from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 and we are already working on testing and enhancing search in that version. 
2. Category and sub-category landing pages. We need rethink the design of these pages to make it easier for people to see what's on the page and understand what actions they can take. 

The last piece that stood out to us was the need to present clusters of information for equity seeking groups. We plan to dig into this more in user interviews so we can understand the user needs of some of these groups. 

The next blog post about this assessment will be on the cross jurisdictional analysis the vendor completed.

For questions about this project you can comment on this post or email eservices@yukon.ca.