More Riders Magazine announced today the results of a comprehensive study of more than 150 transit agency websites in the United States. These sites were evaluated for the quality of information it provided and the accessibility of that design, as opposed to merely a qualitative examination of the design.
Each site was judged on a 100-point scale, with 25 questions in four categories: Rider Information, Time-Sensitive Information, Rider/Community Engagement and Ease-of-Use. Gold Star winners had to have scores that put them in the top 10% of all transit agency websites. Winners of the Top Five awards received scores that put them amongst the top five in the country.
Partial results, including total score and overall ranking are available in this spreadsheet (html, xls). Full categorical results are available only to subscribers and will be in the Fall 2007 issue of More Riders Magazine. The winners in each category are found here on the More Riders website.
There were many great surprises from this survey, including the fact that budget was not a predictor of performance. Many of the smaller websites, including ones that lacked the flash and pizazz of some of the larger sites, actually provided the best information about their service.
It was also interesting to see how many websites are well-designed by modern standards, but are lacking an easy way to access some simple and important service information. Many of the operators of these websites are on the bubble and are probably curious why, after so much investment, another transit agency website with maybe a more dated design performed better. In a lot of these cases, it was the ease-of-access to important information that hurt their final score.
A little background, when we decided to start a publication that focused on improving transit ridership through information we knew there would have to be a strong centerpiece for the first issue.
Much of the research we looked at focused on the importance of certain types of information, including time-sensitive data, that helps in rider decision making. This, combined with our experience in making transit and political websites, led us to design and administer this exhaustive study.
More information will be in the full article published in the fall issue of More Riders magazine, including a look at some of the best and worst practices we uncovered during the study.
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