openstreetmap
Reorganize the navigation bar?
The top-level site navigation bar is largely unchanged since the last big redesign in #498. The only changes have been to restore the Copyright link (#549), add the Communities link (#3301), and convert History and Export to secondary links (#5151).
There’s now a cluster of discussions (#3041, #6506, #6517, #6575, and associated forum topics) jockeying for additions or other changes to the navigation bar based on anecdotal feedback. Some of these discussions have converged on the same need to rethink the overall selection of links. To ground the discussion, can we get:
- Updated criteria for what should go in the navigation bar, elaborating on the points in https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/3041#issuecomment-780445950 and https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/6575#issuecomment-3607600626 – which concrete use cases do we consider important enough to provide direct access to on every page of the site?
- Agreement on where else we’d be willing to move any link that doesn’t make the cut
- Data from Matomo about which links people actually use
- Insights from informal usability tests that folks have done with less experienced users
For what it’s worth, I hold out some hope that we can still make some common-sense changes in the meantime while waiting for a major overhaul, but information along these lines would help us make decisions more easily in the future.
I took the November data and stripped out stuff like object pages, account pages, etc.
The raw data is uploaded, but here's the views of the page where they started from a different page
| Page | Non-entry views | time per viewer (overall) |
|---|---|---|
| /index | 1580834 | 142.487735055261 |
| /copyright | 533162 | 37.064042290088 |
| /edit | 424440 | 524.223794708506 |
| /traces | 76820 | 41.978500244507 |
| /welcome | 61760 | 41.1166715208415 |
| /about | 53180 | 28.9393426322849 |
| /export | 39709 | 142.856980914997 |
| /history | 34565 | 126.369402499349 |
| /diary | 31021 | 43.9299121189107 |
| /communities | 29295 | 52.8283064287737 |
| /help | 15912 | 91.0251298610136 |
| /fixthemap | 9206 | 25.8847288159977 |
| traces | 8408 | 78.4641983932937 |
| user_blocks | 3177 | 75.7516885180771 |
| diary | 1857 | 81.4857142857143 |
| account | 1732 | 67.0976408912189 |
| /login | 1048 | 60.9204152249135 |
/copyright is linked from across the internet so it needs to be treated separately in any analysis
Digging into transitions in the last week reveals some data on which pages are "used"
/communities and /help both are pages with lots of "outlinks", viewers who click on a link to leave the site. A user who doesn't click a link is not getting anything out of the page. 41% of /help views and 19% of /communities views got some use of the page.
The /traces page itself is not very useful, it's only useful if you visit another page from it. There were 5820 viewers of /traces but only 488 views of the sub-pages and an additional 150 users were sent to the login page. Sampling a few other patterns it looks like most clicks on traces didn't have them doing anything on the page.
- which concrete use cases do we consider important
When reviewing #6600 I realised that there's some major use-cases that are not very well catered to in the pages linked to from the menu. The most obvious one being any explanation as to why we would like a visitor to sign up for an account, and the lack of any CTA to encourage them to do so.
The "about" page explains what the project is about, but is dominated by almost more than 50% of the paragraphs being about legal issues - mostly repeating what's available on the copyright page, at that. There's nothing there that explain how or why to sign up.
The copyright page actually has a link to the signup page, but with no explanation as to why you would do so (and it's not clear to me why this features so prominently on the copyright page either - presumably aimed at people clicking attribution links on external maps).
There's no page that guides people towards becoming an OSMF member, or donating to OSMF, although those I think are more likely to be useful to existing registered users.
The information about how to contribute a note is two steps away (Help -> Welcome to OpenStreetMap -> bottom of page).
So in summary, I think we should have a list of ways in which people want to contribute, and make sure the UX is appropriate.
So in summary, I think we should have a list of ways in which people want to contribute, and make sure the UX is appropriate.
I appreciate this framing. It takes effort to avoid shipping our org chart. I’d say there’s lots of ways to contribute, but the three that are most relevant to this site would be: editing the map, spreading the word, and financially supporting the OSMF. (Maybe throw in local chapters while we’re at it.)
The most obvious one being any explanation as to why we would like a visitor to sign up for an account, and the lack of any CTA to encourage them to do so.
Are you thinking of a callout of some sort, like the tooltip on the Edit button when you’re zoomed out too far to edit the map? That button goes straight to the login page, which is convenient for existing registered users. Maybe the /login page could have a banner at the top to the effect of, “Log in to edit the map. Create an account to help us map the world!”
The "about" page explains what the project is about, but is dominated by almost more than 50% of the paragraphs being about legal issues - mostly repeating what's available on the copyright page, at that. There's nothing there that explain how or why to sign up.
Agreed. OpenHistoricalMap’s About page (necessarily) devotes a bit more space to explaining the project’s scope and the various ways to help out. The last time I customized the page, I was annoyed that legalities were arbitrarily split between this page and Copyright. I think this happened because the Copyright page serves a specific function, allowing third parties to meet their obligations under the ODbL, whereas direct users of the website need to see other legalities besides. But the Copyright page doesn’t really maintain this distinction either.
What if we move the About page’s “Legal” section to a dedicated Legal page that summarizes other dedicated pages about:
- Copyright and trademark for reusers (“Where you use OpenStreetMap data…”, “We also include openly-licensed data…”)
- Copyright for contributors (“OSM contributors are reminded…”)
- Other policies (terms of use, API usage policy, privacy policy, etc.)
Legal could replace Copyright in the navigation bar. If any of these things needs to be one hop away from the map on the homepage, a link to /copyright would remain in the map’s attribution. The Copyright page would be more focused on what reusers need to know.
The copyright page actually has a link to the signup page, but with no explanation as to why you would do so (and it's not clear to me why this features so prominently on the copyright page either - presumably aimed at people clicking attribution links on external maps).
Yes, the Copyright page was originally just about legalities, but the CWG realized that this is effectively the face of OSM, so #5989 added some introductory material. I think this was the right move, given the difficulty of changing the licensing guidelines and an untold number of third-party sites at this point. But maybe it wouldn’t look so off-topic if we style the introduction a little differently, as a callout box or sidebar. And I think that part of the Copyright page should link to the About page for more information, not the wiki’s introduction. Then it wouldn’t need to send the user in all sorts of directions by duplicating the navigation bar.
/communities and /help both are pages with lots of "outlinks", viewers who click on a link to leave the site. A user who doesn't click a link is not getting anything out of the page. 41% of /help views and 19% of /communities views got some use of the page.
I’ve read that the Communities page is a stub in anticipation of something more full-featured like Microcosms or OSMCal. It holds promise, but in the meantime, I’m afraid it’s overselling itself. Normally, even local chapter leaders wouldn’t equate “community” with the local chapters, but that’s largely the page’s message. So you get people looking for the forum and getting lost on the wiki instead. (The wiki needs better navigation too, of course.)
The Help and User Diaries pages are also about community. In a perfect world, maybe we’d mash them all into a Community page that features snippets of the latest diary posts alongside previews of the latest forum topics and upcoming events. Maybe extra distance between a diary post and site navigation could disincentivize spammers.
I realize I’m spouting a lot of nonsense about making new pages. Maybe it’s a sign we’ve outgrown a short, flat list of links. Should we give in and add dropdown menus to the navigation bar? It could provide more direct access to miscellaneous pages like /welcome and second-party sites like the wiki.