Online engagement with young people Wednesday 21st July Watershed, Bristol UK By Les Compton Deputy Head of Youth, Play and Outdoor Education.

Online engagement with young people

Wednesday 21st July Watershed, Bristol UK

By Les Compton

Deputy Head of Youth, Play and Outdoor Education

Phase 1 developments

Purpose of project

• To provide children, young people and their families with comprehensive, accurate and accessible information on positive activities

• To develop a single repository for information in order to maximise efficiency

• Includes an integrated activity provider search of organisations on 1 Big Database

• To comply with statutory requirements for publicising activities

Phase 1 Objectives• To develop a web based search engine of positive activities

• To hold and update information on all out of school activity provision

• To enable sufficient sharing of information to allow for one calendar to show sports, arts, performance etc programmes across the city

• To provide the facility for users of the site to feedback on the events available

• To ensure that Phase 1 works towards and supports the ongoing vision of one shared database for Bristol

Phase 1 specification• To commission Focus as the preferred supplier of the Go Places

Do Things website

• Site content:• A search facility for both activities and opportunity providers

in Bristol• A calendar of events and activities• A news facility with the ability for users to add their comments• A ‘Have your say’ section for feedback and comments• A registration facility for activity providers• A ‘Your Bristol’ site for posting Media Clips• To enable existing Bristol City Council databases (1 Bid

Database and Events on Line) to feed content into the calendar

Young Consultants

A group of young people were recruited in February 08 to advise and steer the development

Young Consultants

• Worked with the project team on original design, layout and on content

• Carried out user testing on the preview version of the site and fed back ideas and changes to be implemented

• Quarterly reviews of the site with project group including usage, content and functionality

• Developed proposals for Phase 2

Publicity and Marketing of site

A range of strategies were developed to promote awareness and use.

These included:• Letters to students• Postcards/stickers/posters circulated across Bristol

from June onwards• Publicity launch gaining coverage in Evening Post (x2),

Venue (x2) Bristol radio and Kiss FM

Publicity and Marketing of site cont.

• Media partnership with Kiss FM featuring:• online promotion on Kiss FM, • production of two website promotional

advertisements, each broad cast 20 times over seven weeks

• Three roving reporter and several street team promotions during on air activity

• Promoted over 1500 events throughout the city since launch

• Thriving Facebook presence  

Usage of website

• During the summer holidays we exceeded 11,000 hits in one week in August

• Often people are browsing the site for over 15-20 minutes

• On average viewers looked at 6 pages per session

• The most popular key words for searching the events calendar were music, dance, football, sport, volunteering and youth

Website Usage

Q4 2009

(Oct-Dec)

Q1 2010

(Jan- Mar)

Q3 2010

(Apr-Jun)

Average sessions / day

397.9 260.45 273.21

Average page views / day

1,632.6 1,615 1,904.12

Average hits / day 5,633.62 4,473.7 4,696

Average page views / session

4.1 6.2 6.9

Average length / session

13.5 mins 21.6 mins 22 mins

Direct Traffic 71.7% 88.6% 93.45%

Traffic from Google

23.6% 6.6% 2.62%

Traffic from Bristol.gov.uk

06.% 1.1% 1.36%

Evaluation of GPDT by young people using the Your Views section of the site

During the summer the feedback was positive:

• “Good to find one place with relevant info” • “I think tis is a gr8 site, and has given me loads of things to

do this summer:) (sic)”• “I really think this is an excellent idea for my age group to

get them out in town and having fun I am so fed up of being skint and not being able to see my mates! so getting every one together is just a perfect idea!”

• “Excellent site, wish I discovered it at the start of the summer. Very well laid-out and easy to navigate”.

Suggestions for improvements from users included:

• Review of the look and feel of the site to give it a new template. Less use of black and the inclusion of bright colours

• The inclusion of more videos to form a media zone

• Review and update of home page layout to refocus the site on the Events and Latest News

• The introduction of a new eConsultation module

Children and Young People’s Services

INTEGRATED YOUTH SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

• Home Page Redesign

• Updates to the Events Calendar to include images

• Analysis of the Registration Process

• Your Bristol / Media Section

• Volunteering Section

• Miscellaneous and Viral Features

• eConsultations

Phase 2 Developments

Strategy for Change – Have Your Say survey 2009

• The survey secured a return of 1,450• 4% of young people indicating 84% take part in a positive

activity at least once a week• 52% thought the activities were fairly to very good• 40% wanted more sorts and 34% more arts and crafts

The barriers are:• 34% because the activities are not available in their area• 34% because young people do not know what activities are

available• 18% had no motivation

Areas to address going forward

• Feedback to date has been anecdotal and mostly positive

• Ensuring that the content entered directly by Activity Providers is suitable & interesting for young people

• Allocating resource to updating and moderating the online forum

• Working with young people to encourage even more participation, such as news and reviews

Partnership working with ESP

• Over the summer where possible all activities funded via ESP budgets were put onto the 1BigDatabase which fed directly onto GPDT.

• This worked really well and at times there were over 50 activities per day being promoted across the city.

'What next? Priorities from Young Consultants’

Young Consultants feedback on development options, average scores by order of importance (1= very important, 10 = least important)

2 = Employment, Vacancies and Apprenticeships & Transport & Travel

4= Audio/MP3 content, Further/Higher Education, Forum, Competitions, Service Provider Search and Functionality

5= Photo gallery, Online polls, Enhanced News, Publication to social networking sites

6= Enhanced events diary, User registration, Entertainment

7= Online consultation, Movie Gallery, Play Area Facility

9= eCards