An Analysis of Users' Perceptions

Development of a city website – An analysis of users’ perceptions

Sarianna Visuri

Master’s Thesis International Business Management 2021

MASTER’S THESIS Arcada

Degree Programme: International Business Management

Identification number: 7813 Author: Sarianna Visuri Title: Development of a city website – An analysis of users’ perceptions Supervisor (Arcada): Niklas Eriksson

Commissioned by:

Abstract: The internet has enabled and enhanced communication between people, organizations, governments, and cities. The internet and digitalization of services has changed the way the cities and other public sector actors provide services and information to the residents. The objective of this study was to find out the main improvements the current espoo.fi website users want to have on the renewed espoo.fi website. The renewed website will be launched in 2021. There was a mixed method questionnaire conducted, with both closed and open-ended questions. Espoo has had its website since the late 1990’s and there has been one prior renewal of the website in 2011. The questionnaire was distributed via the current Espoo.fi website and Espoo’s social media channels. It was answered by 433 respondents. The research questions were: how is the current Espoo.fi website used, what are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website, and what are the main improvements the users want to the renewed espoo.fi? The current website was stated to be used to find information on the services, mainly on weekly and monthly basis, and the content of the website needed to be easy to find. The five most wanted topics by the respondents to be on the renewed website were: the services of Espoo, and more precisely health services should be more clearly stated, the contact information of all service locations, and of the employees of Espoo especially working in the city planning and building, city planning issues, a better search function, and decisions made by the City Council and the committees, including the minutes of the meetings.

Keywords: website, quality, usability, accessibility, e-government

Number of pages: 54 Language: English Date of acceptance: 2

CONTENTS

1 Introduction ...... 5

1.1 Research problem and aim ...... 6 1.2 Delimitations ...... 7 1.3 Structure of the thesis ...... 8

2 Literature review ...... 9

2.1 The evolution of the Web ...... 9 2.2 Growth of web usage ...... 11 2.3 The usability of websites ...... 11 2.4 The quality of websites ...... 14 2.5 E-government ...... 17 2.6 The accessibility of websites ...... 19 2.7 Summary of the literature review ...... 20

3 Method ...... 22

3.1 Data collection and participants ...... 22 3.2 Questionnaire design ...... 26 3.3 Data analyses ...... 26

4 Results ...... 28

4.1 How is the current espoo.fi website used? ...... 28 4.2 The user’s perceptions of the content ...... 30 4.3 What are the main improvements the users want for espoo.fi? ...... 34 4.3.1 The new espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics ...... 34 4.3.2 The redesign of the espoo.fi website could be modelled after another website . 38 4.3.3 General feedback on redesigning the espoo.fi website ...... 38

5 Discussion and conclusions ...... 42

5.1 Discussion of the results ...... 42 5.2 Recommendations for the City of Espoo for the website renewal ...... 44 5.3 Limitations ...... 45 5.4 Suggestions for further research ...... 45

References ...... 47

Appendices ...... 52

Appendix A: Research Questions ...... 52 3

FIGURES

Figure 1. The age and sex of the respondents...... 24 Figure 2. The city districts by postal codes given in the questionnaire ...... 25 Figure 3. The ten most visited pages of espoo.fi during February 10-29, 2020s ...... 27 Figure 4. The contents recently visited on Espoo.fi website ...... 31 Figure 5. The information usually needed from the espoo.fi website ...... 32 Figure 6. The main page of the espoo.fi website should include, at minimum ...... 33 Figure 7. The most wanted topics on the new espoo.fi website...... 34 Figure 8. The general feedback on topics on the new espoo.fi website ...... 41

Tables

Table 1. The age groups given in the questionnaire ...... 23 Table 2. The topics the answers of the open-ended questions were coded to ...... 27 Table 3. The answers given to answer RQ1 ...... 29

1 INTRODUCTION

The internet and the world wide web have a major role as the means of communication in today’s world. The importance of a functioning and a usable website is enormous. Al- most all organizations, public or private, associations and even individuals have their own websites. Lamphere (2019) states that world wide web is a technology that assists the public in navigating the internet. The web is a revolutionary invention, made by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, where the internet process is simplified, and documents and other web resources are available for the public in an accessible manner (Lamphere, 2019.)

The web is a revolutionary mean of access to the community, and for citizens to exercise their citizenship within the community. The web provides links between other public institutions, different groups and members of the groups, and the web has for instance improved education and built democracy worldwide. However, the web as one type of media and a communication platform, does not replace schools, city councils or parliaments, but it enables the citizens’ participation in the society in a more streamlined and effective manner. Web technology enables constant discussion and negotiation between people through dynamic and quick processes, and by using different designs and models the web provides possibilities for reciprocity by different kinds of participants. The web also almost achieves the characteristics of a face-to-face communication, but there is a fundamental difference compared with the traditional communication ways such a broadcasted news and printed newspapers. Today’s web broadens the communication between different groups from giving information to having a conversation. (Dahlgreen, 2016)

The improvements of technology according to Rust & Huang (2012) have made it possible to create new service methods, especially within customer service. The more familiar and experienced the customers have become with the internet, the willingness to use the new technology and services has increased. The internet has enabled the creation of different kinds of self-service technologies, and the usage of the self-service technologies has created possibilities for organizations to reduce the number of their service personnel and cut costs. Rust & Huang (2012) continue that efficiency improvements resulting from customers using the internet may also increase service quality, however, very often there

is a trade-off between quality and productivity. A greater use of the internet may increase productivity; however, the quality of the service may be the cost.

1.1 Research problem and aim

The web is, according to Rudman (2016), a publication media that is the most fast growing of all time. Also, cities worldwide are in a need to have usable and accessible websites, as publications and services are more and more provided via the web.

The City of Espoo (Espoo) is the second largest city in Finland with over 297 700 inhabitants as of January 1, 2021. In Espoo, the espoo.fi website is the most important communication channel with the inhabitants of Espoo, but also in relation to other stakeholders, such as investors, immigrants, and employees of the City of Espoo in addition to companies situated in Espoo. The current Espoo.fi website has 11 000 pages and there was a little over six million visits during 2019 (Espoo, 2020).

Espoo.fi is the main website of the City of Espoo. The website is also in Swedish, esbo.fi, and there are translations into English. The website is currently functioning on a content management platform, which was taken into use in 2010. During these years, the content on the Espoo.fi website has expanded tremendously, and therefore there is a huge amount of back dated or even expired information on the website. One reason to the invalid information on the website is that Espoo has a large organization, and the number of persons (600) managing the Espoo.fi website is quite large. The size of the website, i.e. the number of pages and the number of content managers of the Espoo.fi website, are the main reasons for it not to be easy to have it up to date in an appropriate manner.

The most important factor causing the renewal of the Espoo.fi website is the EU Directive on the accessibility of the website 2016/2102 (2016). The Directive states that Member States need to apply the measures mentioned in the Directive by 23 September 2020.

Technology of content management systems have evolved enormously during the years. There are open source platforms available compared for example to content management

systems (CMS) made by IT-companies. Currently Espoo.fi is functioning on a CMS called NetCommunity, which is a static, closed source CMS-product made by Fujitsu. The CMS in use requires a very hierarchical way of presenting the information, and that causes a rather hard-to find-information and a complex website.

The objective of this thesis is to understand the main improvements that the users of Es- poo.fi website want to have. Investigating and examining the needs and wishes of the residents of the City of Espoo and other users of Espoo.fi-website, would enable Espoo to make an accessible and easy to use website for all users. The renewal of the Espoo.fi- website is an enormous task with thousands of pages on the website. The expectations of the website users are already known to be high, as it has been ten years that the previous renewal has taken place, and the usage of websites has evolved greatly.

The research questions of this thesis are:

• RQ1: How is the current Espoo.fi website used? • RQ2: What are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website? • RQ3: What are the main improvements the users want for Espoo.fi?

The answers to these research questions are based on an internet survey conducted in February 2020 among current Espoo.fi users, of which two thirds were the residents of Espoo and one fourth the employees of the City of Espoo.

1.2 Delimitations

The aim of this theses is to understand the improvements the users of the Espoo.fi website want to have on the renewed Espoo.fi website. The quality of the information on the website, usability and accessibility are discussed in the thesis. This thesis does not concentrate on other websites of the City of Espoo, such as websites of high schools, cultural actors and other institutions of Espoo, which have separate websites on various kinds of platforms apart from the current Espoo.fi.

1.3 Structure of the thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the overview and the background of the thesis, the research problem, aim, research questions and the delimitations of the study. The second part of this thesis provides an overview of previous literature on quality and usability issues of public websites. The chosen research method and the data collected for the study are described in the third chapter of this thesis. In chapter four the findings and results are discussed and in chapter five the conclusions of the findings are discussed in addition with the recommendations for further research.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Websites have an enormous importance for residents and other website users, as the services of municipalities are digitalized quite extensively. Websites in general could be considered as hubs of virtual and digitalized service places.

The literature review of this thesis introduces the evolution of internet and the web, the growth of web usage, usability and quality of websites, the topic of E-government and the accessibility of websites.

2.1 The evolution of the Web

The Internet was created in 1983 by the Department of Defense (DOD) of the United States of America. At first it was called Arpanet, and it was created for researchers to communicate with each other freely and quickly. The internet is a global network of in- terconnected networks. It is stated that to organize the protocols and platforms of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer at CERN, created the World Wide Web, WWW. The World Wide Web is nowadays a medium to link people and information and is better known today as the “web”. (Sponder and Kohar, 2017)

According to the World Wide Web Foundation (2021), Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, working as a software engineer at CERN, Switzerland, thought he saw a way to solve the problem of the complexity of protocols and platforms. Berners-Lee un- derstood that the very fast developing internet was connecting millions of computers already at the end of the 1980’s and that there could be a way to share information worldwide by using and emerging technology called the hypertext. By October 1990 Berners- Lee wrote three fundamental technologies, which are HTTP, URL and HTML. Those technologies he wrote are the foundation of the world wide web. (World Wide Web Foun- dation, 2021)

The world wide web has evolved throughout the years since the invention. The first web, nowadays known as Web 1.0, was a document-centric platform with very limited 9

interaction with users of the websites. According to Francesconi (2018) the beginning of the web era was the time of search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo and Google. In the mid 2000’s started the Web 2.0. phase, which he calls the Collaborative Web. The users were able to interact more and share content themselves. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are examples of the collaborative web. Francesconi (2018) argues that we are currently moving onwards to Web 3.0, a Semantic Web, which is an environment where machines will work together as the information is understandable by people and by machines. Fran- cesconi (2018) continues that the semantic web is able to exchange smart data, which is data that has semantic enrichment, and thus enables the users of the web to have better search results and user experience. The future of the web will continue towards Web 4.0, which some call as the Symbiotic Web and some the Pragmatic Web. In the future of the web, there will be autonomous software agents interacting in symbiosis with people using the internet.

According to Sponder et al. (2017) we have already reached the Web 4.0, which is quite new and aimed for emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, clouds, embed- ded intelligence, and artificial intelligence. Sponder et al. (2017) continue that in addition to the new Web 4.0 we are using Web 3.0, which is a more personalized web with an “on demand” approach. Intelligent applications are used to personalize the web experience of the users. Also, the Internet of Things was produced through the invention of software and intelligent devices. New business models have been invented, such as Airbnb and Uber, and things such as refrigerators and TVs to satisfy needs of the web users (Sponder et al., 2017).

The internet has a great deal of advantages when citizens communicate with the municipalities argues Jong (2006). The same author argues that via the internet, the citizens get a large amount of information 24/7, which municipalities can offer, they can add and update the information quickly, and quite easily. Also, the internet offers various kinds of possibilities for interactivity, and for the visitors to interact with the information on the website. However, there has been lack of resources, budget and administrative efforts compared to commercial institutions, why municipalities have not been able to meet the demands of serving the citizens via the internet (Jong, 2006). 10

2.2 Growth of web usage

The Web Foundation (2021) states that in April 1993 CERN announced that the codes by Berners-Lee and his advocates would remain on royalty-free basis, forever. This probably has been the cause and reason why the usage of the web has grown exponentially. The codes could be considered as a gift for all of us, as the existence and usage of web has enabled communication and information sharing, and thus enabling democracy around the world. According to the Web Foundation (2021), after the period of 25 years of the existence of the web, almost 20% of the people around the world were using the web. The growth has been exponential as according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (2021), it was estimated that 4.1 billion people were using the internet in 2019.

The Finnish Federation for Communications and Teleinformatic, FiCom (2021), state that around 79% of the citizens of EU used internet on daily basis in 2020. The internet was mostly used in Iceland, where 98% of the inhabitants used the web daily. Norway, Den- mark and UK have a daily usage percentage of 94, and Finland, Sweden and Luxembourg came third with the share of 92%. The usage of the internet has been growing in Finland, and in 2020 there were only six percent of the residents over 16 years old that had never used the internet. Between ages 16-34 everyone had used the internet during 2020. (Fi- Com, 2021)

During 2020 the main device for internet use in Finland was a mobile phone. Also, the use of a laptop had increased, however, the usage of tablets and PCs have been declining. 87% of the users sent or received emails, 87% used internet for banking and 79% used it to find information on goods and services. (FiCom, 2021)

2.3 The usability of websites

One of the top website usability research groups, Norman Nielsen Group (2012), has stated that the definition of usability is that it is a quality attribute, and it equals that the website is easy to use. The group defines usability by five quality elements, which are learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction. By learnability Nielsen 11

seems to mean that is the website easy to use the first time the users are trying the website design. Efficiency is explained by how the users learn the design, and can they quickly perform the task they want? Memorability Nielsen defines by do the users remember how they have earlier performed the tasks once they return to the design after a period of time? Errors Nielsen asks that how many errors do the users make when using the design and what kind the mistakes there are, and how easy the errors are to recover from? And then, is the design pleasant to use, is defined as satisfaction by Nielsen. (Norman Nielsen Group, 2012)

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (2018) has prepared a document called Ergonomics of human-system interaction by the Subcommittee of its Technical Committees. The ISO 9241-11 framework helps organizations to examine the quality of tasks users execute i.e. the testing of usability. The ISO 9241-11 document explains how usability is interpreted in terms of user performance and satisfaction. The objective of designing and evaluating different systems for usability is to enable users to achieve goals effectively, efficiently and with satisfaction. The ISO framework consists of three com- ponents: System Effectiveness to examine the users’ ability to complete the given tasks, System Efficiency to examine the required user resources to complete the tasks, and Sys- tem Satisfaction to record the users’ opinions and feedback. (ISO, 2018)

Qing-Xing et al. (2017) state in their article that websites are important interfaces in Hu- man-computer interaction (HCI). The evaluation of the website usability is the precon- dition and a critical step for website design and optimization. The websites need to contain useful information and provide the information in an efficient and easily accessible manner. Usability is an important factor to measure and determine the quality of a website. Qing-Xing et al. (2017) state that websites with excellent usability can bring positive impact in users and boost the returning rate to the website. And in contrast, for the websites with low usability, the users will give up and turn to other websites. However, only a subjective approach to usability does not define the usability problem in an objective way. Once a usability evaluation is conducted, the method used should be able to evaluate the usability both in an objective and in a quantitative way. Moreover, it is mentioned that user-centered design has been applied in websites throughout the years, but there has not 12

been the emotional experience of the users of a website measured. Qing-Zing et al. (2017) suggest in their article that to measure website usability in an objective way, the eye- movement and physical arousal make the methodology guiding the usability evaluation much better.

Suarez-Torrente et al. (2016) argued that it is unquestionable that usability is a key factor in building successful websites. And as the lack of usability evaluation can cause a failure to make a successful website, there is a need for usability evaluation methods. Suarez- Torrente et al. (2016) state that even though it has been acknowledged that the usability is essential, there seems not to be time or money to conduct the evaluations. As the evaluation is important there are several existing evaluation tools to be used. Suarez-Torrente et al. (2016) also state that as the web is constantly evolving, the tool must be easily scalable, and it needs to enable the incorporation of new types of websites.

One of the most important measures of the success of information systems is user satisfaction. Once a website is redesigned, there should be measurements of user satisfaction performed on a website before and after the redesign, to discover the actual changes in the usability of the website and the user satisfaction. (Suarez-Torrente et al., 2016)

Pribeanu (2014) argues that the information society requires good quality information and better access to e-services. Pribeanu (2014) states that unfortunately the web content of many municipal websites is unusable, and the developers seem to neglect the principles of user centered design. Usually, the municipal websites are more oriented to present the town, the structure and the offices of the town than practical information that the citizens need. Pribeanu (2014) continues that the user centered design is based on understanding the users of the website and the tasks they try to perform. Also, Pribeanu (2014) writes in the article that although website usability is a main issue in this information society, there are only a few studies really studying the usability of municipal websites, and there are even fewer reports reporting the evaluation results. The usability of a municipal website, in addition to the relevant information and content on the pages, is very important for all the citizens and other users of the municipal website.

Sørum (2016) studied the usability of websites by an eye tracking study with eight persons in ages between 20-44. In the study there were ten public websites exposed to the participants for eye tracking. It was discovered in the study that great attention is put on visual elements on the websites, including the text. Users started by looking at the left upper corner of the website, and in general the left side received more attention than the right side did. The findings also showed that the websites, which contained fewer visual elements, had better usability scores. (Sørum, 2016).

2.4 The quality of websites

In the website quality research by Garcia-Madariaga (2019) it is stated that website quality has been a topic of interest for researchers for the past twenty years. It is argued that there are several dimensions of the website quality when the websites provide information, entertainment and usability. However, there are so many dimensions that it seems that scholars have not been able to reach a consensus what dimensions should be included when website quality is evaluated. There are many aspects that affect the quality of websites, which issues, and topics lie more on opinions than could be studied with exact sci- ences. Garcia-Madariaga (2019) also stated that website quality impacts on trust in the website in a positive way, and in addition, the website information quality has a positive impact and effect on trust towards the website provider.

Today the society is relying on information, most of which, both commercial and public, is provided via the internet. Therefore, the usability and quality of the websites of different institutions and organizations is very important, as they have an influence on the website users’ perceptions of the websites. There is a great impact on the quality of the website, in terms of the number of the website visitors, as well. Websites should be reliable and meet the expectations of the users. Ziemba and Piwowarski (2013) state that accessibility of the information on the websites, in addition to the development of various new or tailored functions to the websites should be supported to meet the needs of the website users.

However, the method of assessing the quality of the websites has been under research. There are several ways to conduct quality assessments such as user activity tracking, expert evaluations, and various surveys. User activity tracking is a complex method, is ex- pensive and requires equipment or software to track the movements. Also, this method is very often evaluating the usability of the website, instead of the quality of the website. Respondents of surveys and expert evaluations often criticize the number of criteria they need to evaluate, which makes the assessments inaccurate if answered carelessly. They have also discovered that there is a problem when creating new website quality assessment models, as the researchers creating the models often use and base the new models on the existing quality assessment models. (Ziemba et al., 2013).

According to Sørum, Andersen & Clemmensen (2013) a high-quality website equals to high quality content. High quality content is especially important on websites, which provide information on e-businesses or is an e-commerce website, but the question is how the websites differ from the websites servicing the public. Sørum et al. (2013) argue that quality is an important aspect not only in e-commerce, but is in general an important issue, when encouraging people to use digital services and to interact via websites. For e-commerce websites to sell more and to inspire the visitors to continue coming back to the websites, the quality is important, and the websites should be designed for the target groups. However, Sørum et al. (2013) state that especially in the public sector, one of the key aspects of the quality of a website, is the quality of the service, how the needs and wants of citizens and local businesses are met.

The service quality is experienced via the communication of the organization, however, how the users experience the level of quality is not easy to measure. Service quality includes the speed of the feedback the users get, in addition, credibility, trust and empathy are mentioned to be part of the service quality. The quality of the information on a website is a driver for the users to return to the website, and when the quality of a website is considered as a broader concept, usability is considered as an important dimension as well. (Sørum et al., 2013)

Giannakoulopoulos, Konstantinou, Koutsompolis, Pergantis & Varlamis (2019) have been researching the quality of website presence and the website’s ability to present the institutions image to the audience of the website. They state that the public organizations need to interact and encounter with the society. Furthermore, the importance of search engine optimization, SEO, has been researched to be a tool, to enable content search, and thus it enables connection with the society. In this digital age, the quality of a website is combined with SEO and they illustrate the web presence together. Website design, structure, accessibility, and the performance of the website are considered to indicate the website quality. (Giannakoulopoulos et al., 2019)

Content quality in e-government websites has often been measured by the fact that if there was contact information and other formal issues given on the websites. The quality assessments have not been considering whether the users of the content found the information, which they were looking for on the websites and was the information on the services relevant to them. Also, as the public websites are made for a group of inhomogeneous users, the accessibility standards of websites are an influential issue when making evaluations on websites. The color contrast, font sizes and visible content separations were important issues when making quality assessments on public websites. (Sørum, 2014)

According to research by Jong (2006) for several years the website of the city of Dor- drecht in the Netherlands was winning awards for the best municipal website of governmental websites. The award was based on user-friendliness, transparency, interactivity, services, and accessibility.

There have been annual quality assessments of public websites in Denmark and Norway for a period of twenty years. In these assessments, quality has been considered to consist of usability, content and accessibility of the websites. The quality of the websites has improved and developed by this initiative, and the websites have been made more user- friendly. The inhomogeneous target group compared to the private sector’s more homog- enous target group makes it more demanding on the public sector to provide websites of

high quality. The public sector has had no direct competition and that might also cause the lack of interest in quality issues. (Sørum, 2015)

User testing by the organizations themselves has also been argued to be a good way of evaluating the quality of public websites and discovering the benefits users find when using the websites. User-friendliness, easy to use websites, in addition to different designs and technical features have been discovered to be part of the website quality as well. (Sørum, 2014)

How young people view municipal websites and their perceptions of quality was studied by Sørum (2018). There were 200 students under 30 years old, mainly between 21-25 years that participated in the study by answering a questionnaire on public websites. The study showed that young adults do not often visit the municipal websites, as mainly the services or the information on the websites are not of interest or relevant to them. The students stated that they prefer digital interaction and online communication in general, however should the municipalities wish to reach to young people, the municipals need to develop the design and content to be more relevant and attempting for the young. In general, the young people were satisfied with the quality of the information on the public websites. (Sørum, 2018)

2.5 E-government

E-government is a term used regarding any use of internet of any governmental organization such as federal governments and municipalities. The aim of the e-government websites is to provide information and offer services for the public (Serrano and Muñoz-Soro, 2017). E-government has been, over the last two to three decades, also considered as an important tool for democracy. However, there has not been much research on the quality of the e-government, even though e-government has been a growing topic in the literature.

During the last 15 years, in various countries, the central governments have launched many new initiatives to improve the quality of online services and information on

websites. In the Nordic countries, such as Norway and Denmark, there has been hundreds of public websites that have been evaluated and the quality of the website has been ranked annually. The quality of websites and examples of best practices has received more and more attention during the recent years. There has been more interest in improving the websites by spending time and money on the quality of the websites. However, the benefits of the improved public websites have not been assessed nor measures taken to understand the use of the public sector websites. (Sørum and Fagerstrøm, 2015)

Economic development has been accelerated by information technology and websites have evolved to be the core service and information channels of very many organizations’, both in private and public sectors. The web can also be considered as an interactive channel between the government institutions and municipalities, and it has created along with the development of the technology new innovations, and opportunities, such as ap- plying for different permits and documents, making appointments and registering for schools. The users of various websites have become more demanding and experienced, as almost every organization has a website (Sørum et al., 2015). However, research on the benefits of public sector websites, have not been conducted, even though the amount of existing websites (Sørum et al., 2015). Sørum (2014) stated that user testing would enable the public organizations to make the quality of their websites better. Also, Sørum (2014) found in her research that if the users of the websites are known by the webmasters, the better the quality of the content has been stated by the website users.

Jong and Lentz (2016) have studied that the complexity of the municipal organizations has made it difficult to design websites that would be user-friendly. There is a large amount of information, which is provided by the different departments of the organizations, with different needs for the presence and services provided on the web. For the designers of the websites, this makes the designing of municipal websites very demanding, as there often is also lack of resources and administrative efforts. According to the research the usability of municipal websites should be placed higher on the agenda of the municipal organizations and the researchers. It seems that the idea for municipalities is to have a website and “that is enough, task completed”. (Jong and Lentz, 2006).

Public websites should be accessible as they provide information for the citizens. The websites should be usable and visible via different search engines, also the performance of the website should be of high quality. Ismailova and Inal (2016) concluded in their research that performance of the websites, influencing the expectations of end users were not considered by the governments themselves. There is also a need for a great effort to reach a better accessibility rate to the e-government websites, as many of the websites violate the quite new principles of accessibility.

2.6 The accessibility of websites

The UN Convention (2021) on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 9, recog- nizes that access to communication technologies and to information, also to the web, is a basic human right. The web is designed for all the people around the world to be used equally and with whatever device, language, or their ability. The web has removed barriers from disabled people and has enabled them to communicate and interact inde- pendently with other people and with organizations. Should the websites and technologies be badly designed, there would be barriers, especially for people with disabilities, to use the web.

The accessibility of digital services has become significantly more important, and the websites and applications need to be user-friendly, easy to use and accessible for all the users, not just people with disabilities. The web accessibility includes technical issues, design and architecture of the website, but also accessibility can be considered as politics, including moral issues, towards all the people. The European Commission (2021) has estimated that in the EU around 100 million people have disabilities and in Finland the number of people is around one million. The importance of the Web Accessibility Di- rective has thus become a great deal to all public actors, as all the digital services need to be accessed and audited as well. The Web Accessibility Directive came into force within the EU in 2016, and following the directive, the Act on the Provision of Digital Services came into force on 1.4.2019 in Finland.

According to the Accessibility Directive (2016) websites and mobile applications of the public sector need to meet the web accessibility standards within the EU. The standards comprise of four accessibility principles: ”perceivability” of information and user interface; “operability” of user interface and navigation; “understandability”, the user interface and information must be understandable; and “robustness” of content to be interpreted reliably by for example assistive technologies. The standards state that information needs to be perceived by hearing or sight, text alternatives need to be used for non-text content, for multimedia captions are needed, user interface needs to be operable, keyboard can only be used to use the content on a website, content can be easily found, text should be understandable and readable, fonts need to be easy to read, and colors need to have enough contrast. (Accessibility Directive, 2016)

Accessibility can be seen as a totally new way to present and manage content on a website. The content managers and experts need to learn a how to make content that is understandable by all of the municipal website users, even the texts cannot be written with difficult terms or by long sentences. The work has only begun in Finland as the transition time to implement the directive standards only ended in September 2020. This is a huge task for the government and the public sector actors to make their websites accessible.

2.7 Summary of the literature review

The literature review reviewed literature on web usability, quality of websites, e-government websites, and accessibility of the public websites. According to the previous studies, it seems that the main issues related to the public websites, is usability and quality. Usa- bility seems to be a prerequisite of quality, and the both issues together are factors that make the websites easy to use. Once the website is easy to use, people will use it more and return to the websites. Also, user satisfaction is discussed in the literature of website quality. Quality of information was discussed to have a positive impact and adding trust towards the website provider.

High quality information in the public sector often also equals the quality of the services provided via the website. The public websites are open for services 24/7, and information is quickly and easily available for the users. Also, interaction via the websites is possible, and for example making appointments and registering for schools, is much easier and quicker via the websites. Public organizations interact with the society via their websites, and therefore also the search engine optimization is an important factor within e-governments.

Accessibility of the public websites is a new issue, and therefore the e-government websites are currently being renewed or have just been adjusted according to the accessibility standards. Also, the review pointed out that many of the e-government websites are not targeted for the users of the websites but are more introducing the organization itself and the office locations. Therefore, the information provided is often not relevant, accurate nor sufficient for the website users.

Next, the method of the empirical study will be described.

3 METHOD

This thesis work is focusing on the Espoo.fi-website and what the users want to have on the renewed website of the City of Espoo. The main research questions are answered by using a mixed research method. The research questions are:

RQ1: How is the current Espoo.fi website used? RQ2: What are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website? RQ3: What are the main improvements the users want for Espoo.fi?

The mixed method research was selected, as mixed research design enables a self-admin- istered questionnaire conducted as a structured asynchronous online interview with both precoded closed-ended questions and some open-ended questions (Bryman, 2015).

According to Bryman (2015) a questionnaire is a structured method, where the researcher designs questions that will help to collect data to answer a specific research question. The research for this thesis was executed via an online questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. The questionnaire was introduced for the website users on the espoo.fi website and via Espoo’s social media channels. The design chosen was a conver- gent parallel design as introduced by Bryman (2015) to be a design where the quantitative and qualitative data is collected simultaneously and have equal priority.

3.1 Data collection and participants

The questionnaire was made with WebropolTM survey and reporting tool. It was introduced to the respondents via the current Espoo.fi-website, via Espoo’s social media channels and to the personnel of the City of Espoo via Yammer and the intranet service Essi. Due to the chosen above mentioned distribution channels of the questionnaire, the respondents ought to have been mainly limited to active users of the espoo.fi website, fol- lowers of the social medial channels of Espoo, and persons working for Espoo. The questionnaire was open for three weeks.

To increase representativity of foreign language speakers, the questionnaire was in the two official languages in Espoo i.e. Finnish and Swedish, also presented in English, which is a so-called service language in Espoo. Currently close to 20 % of the inhabitants in Espoo have another language than Finnish or Swedish as their native language.

The answers reached up to 433 answers, of which 269 (76%) were given by the inhabitants of Espoo, 106 (25%) by employees of Espoo and 13 (3%) of the answers were given by new residents of Espoo.

During the three weeks in February 2020, when the questionnaire was open, there were a total of 421 854 visits to the current espoo.fi-website, on which the link to the questionnaire was located. Depending on the day of the week, the number of visits varied between 10 000 - 30 000 visits per day. Thus, the number of responses in relation to visits is not high, but ought to be enough to provide pretty good insights on usability and content quality matters of espoo.fi.

The respondents to the questionnaire were mainly women, 311 (73%) of the given answers. 103 (24%) of the respondents were men, and 13 (3%) stated “other”, or chose “do not want to say”. Most answers 117 (28%) were given by respondents in the age range of 35-44. There were no answers given by children in the age range of 7-15 years. It is a quite common fact that children and young people do not use the websites of municipalities, and therefore there are other channels such as social media aimed for them. It is very often the parents of the children that visit the website on behalf of their children. See table 1 for a distribution of the age groups in the sample.

Table 1. The age groups given in the questionnaire

Age of the 7-15 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+ respondents

Number of 0 10 64 117 95 70 71 answers

The respondents were also asked whether they have children living at home. 56% stated that they do not have children living in the same household, 41% answered yes and 3% did not want to give an answer to this question. See figure 1 for the age groups and sex of the respondents.

Age and sex of respondents

65+

55-64

45-54

35-44

25-34

15-24

7-15

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Do not want to say Ohter Woman Man

Figure 1. The age and sex of the respondents. The X-axis shows the number of answers.

The respondents were asked to state the area they lived in by “the postal code of my residential area”. The postal codes of Leppävaara were the most given codes. Lintuvaara city district belongs to the greater Leppävaara district and should the Lintuvaara’s postal codes be counted together with Leppävaara’s codes, the greater Leppävaara area would have the largest number of the answers. Greater Leppävaara is the largest city district in Espoo with 70 000 residents, and thus, a large number of responses from this area is in line with the population and area structure of Espoo.

Kauklahti has gained the most inhabitants, within the last couple of years, indicated in percentages in proportion to the number of inhabitants in the area. However, there are only around 11 000 inhabitants currently living in Kauklahti, so it could be assumed that

the inhabitants in Kauklahti district have been eager to answer to this questionnaire, as they have the second highest number of responses.

Greater Matinkylä area with 43 000 inhabitants is the third largest city district in Espoo, which would explain the third largest number of answers to the questionnaire. However, grater Tapiola area is the second largest district in Espoo with 49 000 inhabitants, and the quite small number of answers to this questionnaire is surprisingly low. Tapiola also gained the second greatest number of new inhabitants last year, which makes it even more surprising that there were only a few answers to this questionnaire.

Espoonlahti area is the fourth largest area with 56 000 inhabitants in Espoo, and the number of answers is thus quite expected. Should the answers given in Soukka, be counted with the Espoonlahti answers, the inhabitants in grater Espoonlahti area would have given the second largest number of answers to this questionnaire. As can be seen from the figure 2, the sample represents people from many of the different areas in Espoo.

Survey answers per district 60

Kilo

Olari

Röylä

Kaitaa

Friisilä

Soukka

Tapiola

Jupperi

Henttaa

Nöykkiö

Nuuksio

Muurala

Kalajärvi

Siikajärvi

Kunnarla

Westend

Mankkaa

Gumböle

Otaniemi

Latokaski

Kauklahti

Laajalahti

Karakallio

Matinkylä

Sepänkylä

Haukilahti

Latkokaski

Saunalahti

Lintuvaara

Laaksolahti

Viherlaakso

Espoonlahti

Suvisaaristo

Leppävaara

Niittykumpu

Vanhakartano

Espoon keskus Espoon Pohjois-Tapiola

Figure 2. The city districts by postal codes given in the questionnaire. The Y-axis shows the number of answers. 25

3.2 Questionnaire design

The data was collected via a sample of people willing to answer the questionnaire.

The format of the questionnaire was an easy to answer questionnaire with 16 “tick-the- box” questions and four open-ended questions made with Webropol TM survey and reporting tool. The questionnaire was marketed to be answered within three minutes to make it sound easy to answer, and thus to ensure a good number of participants.

The first part of the questionnaire was desigend to be closed-ended questions regarding the current espoo.fi-website. The aim was to answer the RQ1 and RQ2 “how the respondents have been using and visting the current espoo.fi, and what are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website”. The second part of the questionnaire consisted of four open-ended questions aiming to answer the RQ3 about “the main improvements wanted for the new espoo.fi-website”, and voluntary feedback on the renewal. The aim was to find out the future expecations of the renewed espoo.fi-website, and to better understand their thoughts about generally usable websites. The third part of the questionnaire with closed-ended questions was designed to find out the demographic information of the respondents, as described above in chapter 3.1.

3.3 Data analyses

The WebropolTM survey and reporting tool has a reporting feature, which provides auto- mated reports in form of a PDF-file or an Excel-file. The MicrosoftTM Excel file was used to analyze the data, including the answers to open-ended questions.

The MicrosoftTM Excel file has different columns with headers according the questionnaire made with the WebropolTM survey tool. The closed-ended questions were ready to be analyzed, and the open-ended questions were coded and analyzed by the author of this thesis.

The open-ended questions were read, and the author of this thesis coded the answers by the terms and services that appeared the most. Table 2 shows the terms the author coded

the answers to, and the number of times the terms were mentioned by the respondents in the open-ended questions.

Table 2. The terms, topics and services the answers of the open-ended questions were coded to.

The visits to espoo.fi, during the time in February when the questionnaire was open, were registered with the Snoobi-analytics software, as in figure 3 below. Snoobi-analytics is a software by Fonecta Oy, and it was in this study used to get a better view of the visited webpages of espoo.fi. This is a complement to the survey-questions regarding the RQ1: how the espoo.fi-website is used.

Figure 3. The ten most visited pages of espoo.fi during February 10-29, 2020.

4 RESULTS

The results and findings of this survey are presented in this fourth chapter. The results are presented according to the three research questions, which were: how is the current Es- poo.fi website used, what are the users’ perceptions of the content on the website, and what are the main improvements the users want for Espoo.fi?

4.1 How is the current espoo.fi website used?

There were in total 427 respondents (99%) who stated that they have been using the current espoo.fi. 397 of the respondents (93%), stated they had visited the website using Finnish. 364 (85%) of the respondents said their native language is Finnish, 44 (10%) answered Swedish and 22 (5%) answered somehting else as their native language. The native languages, which the respondents specified were Spanish, Hungarian, English, Portuguese, Italian, Amharic, Tamil, Sign language, Bengal, Urdu, Estionian, Russian, Persian and Bulgarian. The respondents that stated their native language to be something other than Finnish or Swedish, had been using the current website with all the three available languages: Finnish, Swedish and English. Of the Swedish speaking persons half of the respondees had also visited the website using all three languages, and the other half had visited the webstie with only two languages; Finnish and Swedish.

Of the respondents 231 (54%) said that they visit the current espoo.fi-webiste on a daily or weekly basis, and 130 (30%) said they use the website monthly, and 68 (16%) answered less often.

The question asking by which means the espoo.fi-website is visited, the respondents were forced to choose only one of the following devices: smartphone, laptop computer, desktop computer, tablet, and something else, please specify. Desk computer was the most used with 144 (33.5%) of the visitors, laptop had been chosen by 127 (30%) and smartphone by 119 (28%). Tablet was chosen by only 37 (8.5%), and two of the respondents had chosen something else, then specifying by stating that they use all the above-mentioned devices. Compared to the complement information received from the Snoobi-analytics 28

tool, the tool stated that during the time period in February 2020 of all the site visitors 50% visited the site with a smartphone, 47 % with a laptop or desktop computer and 3% with a tablet. See table 3 for the summarized answers by the respondents of using the current espoo.fi website.

Table 3. The answers given to answer RQ1 “how is the current espoo.fi website used?”

Question Answer Number % I have visited Yes 427 99,3 the Espoo.fi No 2 0,47 website Not sure 1 0,23 I have used the In Finnish 397 92,97 Espoo.fi In Swedish 81 18,97 website In English 71 16,63 My native Finnish 364 84,65 language is Swedish 44 10,23 Another language, please specify: 22 5,12 I visit the Daily 60 13,95 Espoo.fi Weekly 171 39,77 website Monthly 130 30,23 Less often 68 15,82 I never visit the website 1 0,23 Usually I visit Smartphone 119 27,74 the Espoo.fi Laptop computer 127 29,6 website Desktop computer 144 33,57 using a Tablet 37 8,62 Something else, please specify: 2 0,47 Usually I -With a Google search 137 31,86 -By selecting the direct link, I have navigate to saved in my bookmarks 50 11,63 -By writing the address Espoo.fi in the the Espoo.fi browser 214 49,77 -By writing the subpage’s address, e.g. website Espoo.fi/servicecentres 10 2,33 -Via a link from the social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) 13 3,02 -By other means, please specify: 6 1,39

When asked how the respondents navigate to the espoo.fi website 214 (50%) answered by writing the address espoo.fi in the browser, 137 (32%) answered with Google search and 13 (3%) via link from the social media. The Snoobi-analytics tool showed that out of 29

all the visitors during the same time period as the quetionnaire was open 58% of the visitors came via Google search, 31% by writing the address espoo.fi and 4% via a link from social media.

As stated in the figure 3 above in section 3.3, the two most visited pages were the main page of the website, and the social and health services’ online booking system. Third most visited page was “What’s on”, the fourth was lunches served at schools and day care centers by Espoo Catering, the fifth dental care, the sixth the Leppävaara swimming hall, the seventh the intranet of the City of Espoo, the eighth the social and health services main page, the ninth the “summer job voucher” for the teenagers living in Espoo, and the tenth the e-services main page. All of the ten most visited pages were pages in Finnish language.

4.2 The user’s perceptions of the content

The question on the most visited content of the current espoo.fi website was a multichoice question. All of the listed items were possible to choose from. Social and health services were chosen by 283 (66%) of the users, and culture and sport by 195 (45%) the users, making the sections the two most popular ones. Housing and environment in addition to the City of Espoo and childcare and education were also in TOP 5. See figure 4 for the contents recently visited on current espoo.fi website.

Recently, I have visited the follwing contents of the Espoof.fi website

Social and health services Culture and sport Childcare and education Housing and environment Jobs and enterprise City of Espoo E-services Families

Youth Contents visited Elderly Disabled Visitors Something else, please specify: Not sure – I googled and clicked on the link

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Number of answers

Figure 4. The contents recently visited on Espoo.fi website.

The information that 340 (79%) of the respondents usually need when visiting the current espoo.fi website was “information on services, e.g. contact details”. “Information on current projects” was chosen by 170 (40%) and “on decision-making” by 156 (36%) of the respondents, making the statements the most needed information from the website. How- ever, it was interesting to find out that only 120 (28%) of the respondents had chosen “news”, and 126 (29%) of the respondents “events”, and in most cases, they had chosen either one of them, not both. The news and events are usually the most visible items on various municipal websites, including the City of Espoo. In this case, according to the respondents of this questionnaire, news and events has not been the most needed information of the current espoo.fi website. See figure 5 for the usually needed information from the espoo.fi website.

I usually need the following information from the Espoo.fi website

Information on services, e.g. contact details

Information on current projects

Information on decision-making

News

Events

Statistics Informationneeded Open jobs

Something else, please specify:

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Number of answers

Figure 5. The information usually needed from the espoo.fi website.

312 (72%) of the respondents stated that they usually find what they are looking for on the espoo.fi website. It was interesting to see that 45 (11%) of the respondents replied that they were not sure, and 74 (17%) answered no.

269 (63%) of the respondents of the questionnaire stated to visit the current espoo.fi as a resident, 106 (25%) as employees of the City of Espoo and 13 (3%) as a new Espoo resident. Considering the Aalto University, located in Otaniemi in Espoo, it was very interesting to find out that none of the respondents stated to be students. Also, only three persons answered the questionnaire as an entrepreneur and three as a jobseeker. There was a possibility to give a written answer “of another role”, which was answered by 24 (5%) most of them stating being in a role of a member of a residents’ association.

When asked what the main page of the espoo.fi website should at minimum include 274 (65%) of the 421 respondents answered this multichoice question by choosing the first- choice “News about Espoo”. Also, the choice “ Events in Espoo” was chosen by 273 (65%) of the respondents, 247 (59%) chose information on the operations of the City of

Espoo, 240 (58%) current opportunities for social involvement and influence, 224 (53%) decisions made by the city board, 99 (24%) chose open jobs of the City of Espoo, 98 (23%) chose the most popular pages. The last three choices regarding the social media posts of the City of Espoo were chosen by only 7-11% of the respondents, which is a clear indication that social media feeds are not needed on the main page of the City of Espoo. See figure 6 what the espoo.fi main page should include, at minimum.

The main page of the Espoo.fi website should include, at minimum

News about Espoo Information on the operations of the City of Espoo Events in Espoo Decisions made by City Board Current opportunities for social involvement and… The latest Facebook posts of the City of Espoo The latest Instagram posts of the City of Espoo The latest Twitter posts of the City of Espoo The most popular pages

Topics Topics wantedon main page Open jobs of the City of Espoo Something else, please specify:

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Number of answers

Figure 6. The main page of the espoo.fi website should include, at minimum.

The last multichoice question asked about how the respondents would search for information when they want to know something about Espoo. 70% or the respondents answered that they would search the information on the espoo.fi website and 60% said they would find it by googling. Social media channels were chosen by 12% and reading newspapers or other conventional media was chosen by 10%. None of the respondents chose YouTube, despite the fact that Espoo has several YouTube channels.

4.3 What are the main improvements the users want for espoo.fi?

The following open-ended statements here presented to the respondents: • The new espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics • The redesign of the espoo.fi website could be modelled after another website • The best website I have used is, please specify which website and why • Below is my general feedback on redesigning the espoo.fi website

4.3.1 The new espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics

217 of the 433 gave their answer to this statement “the new espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics. The most wanted topics were contact information, which was clarified as address of the office and telephone number, and services. Services was mentioned as a general word and with the prefix health. Should the topics services and health services be counted together, the topic services in general would be the highly most chosen topic. See figure 7 for a summary of the most important topics identified.

Topics wanted to the new espoo.fi website

Contact information Services City planning Search Decision making, minutes News and current issues Events

Target groups Topics Opening hours Participation and influence Health services City districts Sports Appointment booking 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Number of answers

Figure 7. The most wanted topics on the new espoo.fi website.

It was interesting to discover that these above mentioned two most wanted topics were quite simple issues in general. Below are some comments and responses given to the question:

“Contact information clearly given to different functions, information on decision making”, Woman, age 25-34, children

“Information on services: opening hours and contact information (also the exceptions), events in Espoo and Own pages > targeted content and also one’s own services via identification”, Woman, age 35-44, children

“Basic information with contact information on services, links to services via web such as appointments, information on projects (e.g. changes in one’s own neighborhood preferably with some visuality, information on changes in traffic arrangements), a possibility to influence the city planning and development (something more interactive, not just information).” Woman, 35-44, no children

“Health services, issues related to school, sports services”, Woman, age 35-44, children

“More logical paths to different services within the website, and up to date opening hours and contact information. Good instructions in English and usable visuality of the site.“ Woman, age 35-44, children

“All the services with their contact information + relevant issues” Woman, age 45-54, no children

“City planning”, which includes planning and building of living spaces, houses, offices, streets and other spaces was the third most written topic by the respondents. The city of Espoo is growing in terms of new office buildings, public transport such as metro, and residential areas. The current residents are very interested in the city planning, it seems that they wish to know what is built and why in their neighborhoods.

The fourth most wanted topic was a “Search function”, the replies also including comments on the current website’s search function not to be a functioning one. The usage of search engines, especially Google here in Finland, has taught people to make searches in the web. Many of the respondents of the questionnaire explained how difficult the current 35

website is to find information. The search function on the current espoo.fi website, has very different functionality than for example Google, and the users do not know the dif- ferences. The search function on the current espoo.fi does not understand any spelling mistakes or incorrect terms, which could be one reason why people do not like the search function on the current espoo.fi website.

“Decision making, minutes” of the official decisions made by the City Council, was in the top 5 wants of the respondents. The above-mentioned “city planning” and “decision making” can be considered to be somewhat linked together, as city planning decisions are made by the City Council. As these two topics are linked together, it could be assumed that the respondents meant the same issue, the idea that they wish to know what happens in their neighborhoods, even though some respondents answered, “decision making, minutes” and some respondents “city planning”. Currently, the website is the most accessible channel for all the residents to find this kind of information on the decisions. There are no customer service locations to visit or telephone numbers to call to find the information, unlike for example health care service has. The city council meetings are available to the public via streaming, but it seems that according to the respondents, the espoo.fi website is the most important channel for decision making issues and minutes of the meetings.

“New, decisions and pages for citizens.”, Man, age 25-34, children

“Decisions, City Council, Boards, agendas, minutes. Announcements. City planning. Construction projects. Construction of infrastructure. “ Man, age 55-64, children

“Instructions how to take part and influence the decision making.” Woman, age 45-54, no children

“News and current issues” were the sixth most mentioned topics, which are in connection with the city planning and decision making. The residents of Espoo are very interested in all projects and construction work nearby their houses, and some of the answers also mentioned that the news about city planning are important.

“City planning and projects are very inspiring and positive, once Espoo develops. The news about metro, lovely it is getting ready, good news about Espoo, current issues, news for young and children and seniors, and disabled in addition news for other residents.” Woman, age 55-64, no children

“Events” were mentioned as the seventh most wanted improvements. Many of the respondents mentioned only the word “events”, some had included the words “in Espoo”, and some mentioned the word “sports”.

“Events, opening hours for venues easily”, Woman, age 35-44, children

“Target groups” mentioned in the open-ended replies were families with children, seniors, youth, and disabled people. Some mentioned the word search in these answers, which would indicate that the current search does not work well for certain target groups. Some of the events in Espoo are targeted only for specified target groups, which some of the answers stated.

” Information how to influence, news, current issues for families with children and seniors.”, Gender unknown, age 55-64, do not want say about children

“Opening hours” was mentioned separately and the topic did not occur as many times as the item contact information. The word contact information may, however, include the information on opening hours, however, here “opening hours” was the ninth most separately mentioned item.

“Opening hours, contact information, clear information on e.g. the services of swimming halls (the measures of the pools etc.), current issues to be found easily, e.g. what is built, what is planned.” Woman, age 35-44, children

“Participation and influence” are quite new as terms and do not usually occur in spoken language. However, the public sector has been using these words for a couple of years when involving citizens in decision making. The term influence was more used than participation, as this vocabulary relating to the work of a city, is only a few years old.

“Participation of the residents and possibilities to influence via stories. Note accessibility.” Woman, age 45-54, do not want say about children

4.3.2 The redesign of the espoo.fi website could be modelled after another website

The idea of this question was to find out the websites the respondents like in general. Which websites they consider to be usable, and which are on top of their minds? 92 respondents gave their answers to this question, which might indicate that this question was not easy to answer.

The answers included the website of cities in Finland and abroad, such as Tampere, New York, Nurmijärvi, Savonlinna, Turku, Kirkkonummi, Helsinki, Hämeenlinna, Stock- holm, Melbourne and the White House. The website of the tax authority in Finland as well as Kela, the social security institution, were also mentioned, in addition to a travel agency Tjäreborg and a chocolate company Fazer. In total the number of answers to this question was small, 21% of the respondents gave an answer to this question, which might indicate that there are not that many excellent municipality websites.

4.3.3 General feedback on redesigning the espoo.fi website

Respondents were asked to give general feedback regarding the espoo.fi website renewal. 159 of the respondents gave an answer to this question, two respondents had answered, but left the field empty. The answers were read and coded to find out the most important suggestions by the respondents.

The answers in general were emphasizing the previous answers to the prior three open- ended questions. The main issue the respondents raised was the “search function”.

” Clear and illustrative, easy to find what you are searching for” Man, age 65+, no children

” Quite good with key words right on the first page. I do not need that much news about Espoo, the most I search for is something specific, so that is why the search function is very important!!”, Man, age 55-64, with children

“The school and health information are not easy to use. It's hard to find the information and to know you have found all the information or whether there is more somewhere else. The health information is not so clear.” Woman, age 35-44, with children

The second most mentioned issue was “the usability” of the website, how easy it is to use and how easily the information can be found.

“Clear structure. If you try to search for something on the current site, you end up in the middle of a swamp and you fall down even deeper without finding what you are looking for.” Woman, age 35-44, with children

” How easy it is to find the information: we missed the registration for a sports class at school for our 12-year-old, as the information should have been search for on the school’s own website. A current news, issues section could be with events coming up within the next three to five days.” Woman, age 35-44, with children

” It is very hard to find what you are looking for on the current website, there is lot of information and the navigation is difficult. For example, the contact information for health services are hard to find.” Woman, age 25-34, with children

“Visuality” and “accessibility” were also mentioned. Large pictures seem to make the loading of the pages slower, and more contrast of the colors and text were also asked for.

” Clear structure and modern design.” Woman, age 35-44, with children

” Your website is very confusing, and it is difficult to navigate and usually I do not find what I am looking for. The site is not accessible, and the graphics is bad. The pages are difficult to use by a person with a bad sight. It is not possible to listen to the text at the same time when you are moving the cursor on the text.” Woman 55-64, no children

“Participation” with regards to the renewal of the website, as well as “the decision making of the City of Espoo” in general were also mentioned. 39

” Let people, of different ages to try the website before you launch the new website. Usually the websites of cities are hard to navigate and things are hard to find, the current pages I consider to be such, it is difficult to find information on them.” Woman, age 35-44, no children

” It would be very good to have updates for example on the school webpages. How to participate in decision making and give feedback. Put up the information of the municipal premises.” Woman, age 45-54, with children

” Espoo.fi should be a platform for participation, not just a communication channel.”, Woman, age 25-34, no children

The fifth topic mentioned was “languages” appearing on the website. There are two official languages in the City of Espoo, which are Finnish and Swedish. However, the City Council has decided that also English is used, as a service language, in Espoo. The comments are referring to the current espoo.fi website, as the level of translations is low, and there are several pages lacking the translations.

” Historically the content has been much worse in Swedish and mixed a lot with Finnish. Check that the languages are separated.” Man, 35-44, with children

“Never enough information in English. Always confusing and frustrating when trying to book a dental appointment for my child.” Woman, age 45-54, with children

” The Swedish pages should contain the same information as the ones in Finnish, as Espoo is a city with two official languages. At the moment the situation is not as it should be. Much is missing, mainly the information regarding the services for disabled. “ Man, age 55-64, did not want to say about children

See figure 8 for the topics and issues stated when asked about general feedback on the renewed espoo.fi website.

General feedback given

Search function

Easy to use

Visuality, accessibility

Items Items mentioned Participation

Languages

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Number of answers

Figure 8. The general feedback on topics on the new espoo.fi website

5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this thesis was to find out what are the main improvements the users of the espoo.fi website wish to have to the renewed espoo.fi website. The renewal project has already lasted for three years, and the technologies and ways of using the web has changed during the years the current espoo.fi website has existed. The findings of this thesis are helping to make the renewed espoo.fi website as usable as possible for the users of the website.

5.1 Discussion of the results

According to the findings, the users of the current espoo.fi website, are mostly searching for the services the City of Espoo provides for its residents, and especially the health services. In addition to the services, contact information, city planning, search function and decision making including the minutes of the meetings, were the TOP 5 topics wanted to the renewed espoo.fi website.

The most mentioned topic, by the users of the current espoo.fi website, was the “services” of the city. The residents stated that they wish to have information on all the services Espoo provides, and the services they are legally entitled to. Information on the “health services” was pointed out by many of the current espoo.fi website users. Services such as schools, sports and leisure issues, day care, and services for different target groups such as disabled people and seniors, were also mentioned. The research conducted by Sørum (2015) also stated that individuals in Denmark and Norway appreciated self-services, the relevance of services presented, opportunities for personal help and personalization of the services.

The second most important topic was the “contact information” of different services, and the employees of the city. Mainly the addresses of the city service locations were stated to be looked for. Several respondents mentioned also the contact information of the employees of the city, especially regarding the city planning, decision making and building.

According to the research by Sørum (2015) useful contact information was also found an important issue for quality in the public website assessment.

The website is currently the only channel, which Espoo has for the residents to find information on the “city planning”. The office locations, through which the information was previously available, have been closed down. There are many projects going on in the city, and the website, in addition to the official meetings of the city’s municipal committees and other decision-making bodies, are the only channels via which the city planning information is available. This might be the reason for this to be the third most mentioned topic.

“The search function” was found to be very important for finding the information on the espoo.fi website. It was the fourth most wanted topic to the new espoo.fi website. The technology and the ways to use the web has dramatically changed within in the last ten years, during the time of which the current espoo.fi has existed. Giannakoulopoulos et al. (2019) found in their research that search engine optimization is very important as it enables content search. Also, Sørum (2015) has found that the search function is an important function when considering the user adoption of websites.

“Decision making and the minutes of the meetings” of the City Council and the various committees were mentioned as the fifth most important topic. If the comments on the two topics, the “city planning” and the “decision making and the minutes of the meetings” would be counted together, they would together make a topic, that would have been the most wanted topic of the questionnaire. According to Jong (2006) there has been a problem with search engines on public websites that when people have been looking for decisions they have found permits, as the keywords or the search engines have not been functioning well.

5.2 Recommendations for the City of Espoo for the website renewal

The City of Espoo considers the espoo.fi website to be one of its most important communication channels. There are other communication channels as well, such as social media channels. Espoo also has six service points in various locations in Espoo, at which residents can get information in spoken form or as brochures and other printed materials. Espoo is heavily moving towards services via the web, and the plan is to close four of the six service points, and to end providing printed materials as much as possible.

The author of this thesis recommends that the five most wanted topics, which were the services the City of Espoo, contact information, city planning, search function and decision making including the minutes of the meetings, should at least be clearly stated on the renewed website. The two most wanted topics by the respondents, for the renewed espoo.fi main page, were news about Espoo and events. These two topics are recommended to be put on the main page as suggested by the respondents. Information on city districts was mentioned to be important, and therefore especially the city planning plans, when there is the possibility to comment on the plans before the decisions are made, should be clearly presented as well. Participation is a new way of the public sector to cooperate with the residents and to let them take part in the city planning. Thus, the possibilities and methods for participation should be clearly presented on the renewed espoo.fi website. Various target groups were also mentioned by the respondents, as they wish to find information that is relevant to them. Therefore, the information and content for special target groups, such as seniors, disabled people, families with children and young people should be clearly indicated. A constant on-going feedback questionnaire of the renewed website could be presented on espoo.fi, to collect feedback and comments of the users. The structure of the website should be simple and the search engine easy to find and to use.

Technical accessibility can be controlled with for example Siteimprove accessibility tool, however the accessibility in terms of understandable and readable content, is an issue that needs cooperation within the whole organization.

5.3 Limitations

The empirical study for this thesis was made via a web questionnaire, which was provided via the current espoo.fi website and via Espoo’s social media channels. There were 433 respondents giving answers to the questionnaire. Users between ages of 55-64 years gave 70 answers, and seniors 65 years and older gave 71 answers, which together were 34% of the answers given in total. However, none of the respondents were between the ages of 7-15 and only 10 respondents were between the ages of 15-24 years. Therefore, the findings presented, and the recommendations given to the City of Espoo for the renewal of the website, are limited to answers mainly given by women between the ages 35-54.

5.4 Suggestions for further research

For future research, the author of this thesis, would recommend making research on how the websites like espoo.fi have followed the standards of accessibility. Accessibility, as a quite new issue within the public sector’s websites, as also presented in chapter 2.6., would be very important and interesting to study in more detail. It could be interesting to investigate how much time and effort have all the public sector operators used when re- newing their websites according to the accessibility standards. The technical accessibility could be studied by using tools such as Accessibility Chrome Extension, ANDI (Accessible Name & Description Inspector), Siteimprove and Tenon.io. The tools evaluate the non-functional links on the websites, spelling mistakes and the technical accessibility in general.

Part of the accessibility standards, however, is that the textual content on the websites should be understandable by all parties, and this is an issue that could be studied as well. Textual understandable content has not been a virtue on public websites, and at least not in Espoo. Throughout the years there has been more and more content added to the current website, by experts of all fields, writing texts using professional words and terms from various laws. The experts have considered their texts to be good and applicable for the websites, however the texts have been too complicated for the users according to the

feedback received during the years. A clear research question could be: Is the textual content accessible?

For future research, the author would also recommend making research on how municipalities would diminish the emissions of CO2 by providing the majority of their services via the web. Also, the need for power and energy for the usage of websites with computers and mobile devices would be interesting to study. The webpages are constantly down- loaded, and should the websites be badly designed, the time and energy used to find the information needed might consume more energy than expected. The services only via websites could cause misunderstandings and delays in services, as there might be mis- leading or out of date information on the websites. However, only the web can offer equal opportunities and access to the public services for all the residents and website users.

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APPENDICES

Appendix A: Research Questions

1. I have visited the Espoo.fi website Yes No Not sure

2. I have used the Espoo.fi website In Finnish In Swedish In English

3. My native language is Finnish Swedish Another language, please specify:

4. I visit the Espoo.fi website Daily Weekly Monthly Less often I never visit the website

5. Usually I visit the Espoo.fi website using a Smartphone Laptop computer Desktop computer Tablet Something else, please specify:

6. Usually I navigate to the Espoo.fi website With a Google search By selecting the direct link I have saved in my bookmarks By writing the address Espoo.fi in the browser By writing the subpage’s address, e.g. Espoo.fi/servicecentres Via a link from the social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) By other means, please specify:

7. Recently, I have visited the following contents on the Espoo.fi website Social and health services Culture and sport Childcare and education Housing and environment

Jobs and enterprise City of Espoo E-services Families Youth Elderly Disabled Visitors Something else, please specify: Not sure – I googled and clicked on the link

8. I usually need the following information from the Espoo.fi website Information on services, e.g. contact details Information on current projects Information on decision-making News Events Statistics Open jobs Something else, please specify:

9. I usually find what I am looking for on the Espoo.fi website Yes No Not sure

10. I usually I visit the Espoo.fi website as A resident A new Espoo resident A student A jobseeker An entrepreneur A tourist A cooperation partner A City of Espoo employee In another role, please specify:

11. The main page of the Espoo.fi website should include, at minimum News about Espoo Information on the operations of the City of Espoo Events in Espoo Decisions made by City Board Current opportunities for social involvement and influence The latest Facebook posts of the City of Espoo The latest Instagram posts of the City of Espoo The latest Twitter posts of the City of Espoo The most popular pages Open jobs of the City of Espoo Something else, please specify:

12. When I want to know something about Espoo, I search for it On the Espoo.fi website In social media, such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter On YouTube By googling By reading newspapers or other conventional media Some other way, please specify:

13. The new Espoo.fi website should cover at least the following topics

14. The redesign of the Espoo.fi website could be modelled after another website, please specify:

15. The best website I have used is, please specify which website and why:

16. Below is my general feedback on redesigning the Espoo.fi website

17. My age is 7–14 15–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65+

18. My sex is? Man Woman Other Do not want to say

19. I have children living at home Yes No Do not want to say

20. The postal code of my residential area is

Do you wish to take part in the redesign and improvement of the Espoo.fi website? Please send an e-mail at [email protected] by 29 February 2020. Your e-mail address will only be used to send messages about the Espoo.fi website redesign.