After visiting the website of the Radio Society of Great Britain for no particular reason the other day; I noticed that the results of the national survey of radio amateurs had been published.
After reading through these I was rather pleased to see they had used one of my responses on a slide relating to the RSGB website:
The website should be the first port-of-call for radio related information, news, projects etc. The site should aggregate articles from across the web and provide frequently updated RSS Feeds. Southgate ARC provides a very good news aggregation service which is superior to anything offered by the RSGB site. This is the wrong way around!
Amateur Radio Survey Questionnaire Analysis 2011, Page 22, Point 3
As a result, I wanted to expand on my impression of the Society's website.
News and Latest Information
On the home page of www.rsgb.org, news is awkwardly split-up into different sections: a scrolling ticker at the top, GB2RS News and RSGB Articles and Statements.
The first of these should be scrapped. Scrolling tickers are an annoyance. If I visited the site frequently, I would rarely sit and watch that ticker scroll through each of its items. Actually, even on rare visits do I do that.
The other two sections should be merged. Upgrading the news system to something more modern that supports tagging or categorisation would easily enough permit articles to be filtered, but on the home page the latest articles in chronological order should be visible in one obvious list.
Since the survey response, I've noticed that RSS feeds are available from news articles, but you have to visit the News section to find them. Really, if news is going to be on the home page, then a News section is unnecessary and the feed links should be placed on the home page.
For sharing, those news stories which are published by the RSGB do have links for the common social networks and email. This is good. There is no commenting however. Enabling this feature could be an interesting way to poll the opinions of the membership and radio amateurs at large.
About Us and Services
The Society has a section labelled About Us. As an RSGB member and licensed radio amateur I consider this to be of no relevance to me. However, clicking into that section I find information on various services offered such as the AV Library, the QSL Bureau, lists of affiliated societies etc. There is obviously a wealth of information here that could be missed simply because of a bad heading. Perhaps keeping the About section to 'About Amateur Radio' and 'About the Society' would be best, and creating a 'Services and Information' section would give those pages more prominence?
Style
I'm not going to make to many comments on the actual style of the site as this is personal preference - what I may like/dislike, another will probably think totally different to me. What I will say is that the style of the site should be consistent in all sections.
I have counted at least four different styles in use: That used in the home page and many other pages, that in the Tutors section, that in the Operating section and the RSGB shop. A common theme across all areas would aid navigation and enhance the appearance of the site.
Relevance
According to the copyright date of the page itself, the Links section doesn't appear to have been updated since 2006. A page of this type should be reviewed regularly to ensure that links still work and are still relevant. Whilst most do seem to work, I couldn't connect to "Marconicalling" (www.marconicalling.com) at the time of writing.
Whilst mentioning the Links section, there is no clear policy on how a site gets listed here, nor a form to request consideration.
Member's Area
First of all, a proper secure logon method would be nice as opposed to the popup box requesting a username and password.
Next, some sort of account management section would be very useful. RSGB members should be able to update callsigns, change passwords and amend their contact details. Some of this would save administrative time as at present these details have to be changed via email or by telephone.
While a number of issues of Radcom are available to view in PDF in the member's area, I would like to ability to download these PDFs for personal use. Currently, Flash is used to view these issues online and whilst this is fine for general viewing it seems impossible to search.
This would probably be a controversial suggestion from the society's point of view. They sell annual CDs containing PDFs. By offering these for download they'd potentially be losing out. However, I won't buy one of these CDs as I won't pay for a magazine a second time - well certainly not the cost that these discs are currently made available. I want to be able to keep copies of Radcom for future reference, but don't want to keep stacks of magazines in the shack. I also don't want a collection of CDs which, whilst better, still take up valuable space.
Summary
In conclusion, the RSGB site needs a thorough overhaul. It needs consistent styling across all sections and a review policy to ensure pages don't become out-of-date. Members need to have a proper area where they can manage their accounts as well as receive enhanced content and it would be nice to see PDF downloads of back-issues of Radcom.
All news articles should contain sharing links, and commenting facilities. Perhaps some sort of integration with social media could be helpful too.
The RSGB website is of prime importance for amateur radio in the UK. It needs to sell the hobby to all newcomers but in particular those at the younger end of the age spectrum. A modern well designed website will hopefully help grasp their attention and hopefully encourage take up of an interesting and diverse hobby.
After reading through these I was rather pleased to see they had used one of my responses on a slide relating to the RSGB website:
The website should be the first port-of-call for radio related information, news, projects etc. The site should aggregate articles from across the web and provide frequently updated RSS Feeds. Southgate ARC provides a very good news aggregation service which is superior to anything offered by the RSGB site. This is the wrong way around!
Amateur Radio Survey Questionnaire Analysis 2011, Page 22, Point 3
As a result, I wanted to expand on my impression of the Society's website.
News and Latest Information
On the home page of www.rsgb.org, news is awkwardly split-up into different sections: a scrolling ticker at the top, GB2RS News and RSGB Articles and Statements.
The first of these should be scrapped. Scrolling tickers are an annoyance. If I visited the site frequently, I would rarely sit and watch that ticker scroll through each of its items. Actually, even on rare visits do I do that.
The other two sections should be merged. Upgrading the news system to something more modern that supports tagging or categorisation would easily enough permit articles to be filtered, but on the home page the latest articles in chronological order should be visible in one obvious list.
Since the survey response, I've noticed that RSS feeds are available from news articles, but you have to visit the News section to find them. Really, if news is going to be on the home page, then a News section is unnecessary and the feed links should be placed on the home page.
For sharing, those news stories which are published by the RSGB do have links for the common social networks and email. This is good. There is no commenting however. Enabling this feature could be an interesting way to poll the opinions of the membership and radio amateurs at large.
About Us and Services
The Society has a section labelled About Us. As an RSGB member and licensed radio amateur I consider this to be of no relevance to me. However, clicking into that section I find information on various services offered such as the AV Library, the QSL Bureau, lists of affiliated societies etc. There is obviously a wealth of information here that could be missed simply because of a bad heading. Perhaps keeping the About section to 'About Amateur Radio' and 'About the Society' would be best, and creating a 'Services and Information' section would give those pages more prominence?
Style
I'm not going to make to many comments on the actual style of the site as this is personal preference - what I may like/dislike, another will probably think totally different to me. What I will say is that the style of the site should be consistent in all sections.
I have counted at least four different styles in use: That used in the home page and many other pages, that in the Tutors section, that in the Operating section and the RSGB shop. A common theme across all areas would aid navigation and enhance the appearance of the site.
Relevance
According to the copyright date of the page itself, the Links section doesn't appear to have been updated since 2006. A page of this type should be reviewed regularly to ensure that links still work and are still relevant. Whilst most do seem to work, I couldn't connect to "Marconicalling" (www.marconicalling.com) at the time of writing.
Whilst mentioning the Links section, there is no clear policy on how a site gets listed here, nor a form to request consideration.
Member's Area
First of all, a proper secure logon method would be nice as opposed to the popup box requesting a username and password.
Next, some sort of account management section would be very useful. RSGB members should be able to update callsigns, change passwords and amend their contact details. Some of this would save administrative time as at present these details have to be changed via email or by telephone.
While a number of issues of Radcom are available to view in PDF in the member's area, I would like to ability to download these PDFs for personal use. Currently, Flash is used to view these issues online and whilst this is fine for general viewing it seems impossible to search.
This would probably be a controversial suggestion from the society's point of view. They sell annual CDs containing PDFs. By offering these for download they'd potentially be losing out. However, I won't buy one of these CDs as I won't pay for a magazine a second time - well certainly not the cost that these discs are currently made available. I want to be able to keep copies of Radcom for future reference, but don't want to keep stacks of magazines in the shack. I also don't want a collection of CDs which, whilst better, still take up valuable space.
Summary
In conclusion, the RSGB site needs a thorough overhaul. It needs consistent styling across all sections and a review policy to ensure pages don't become out-of-date. Members need to have a proper area where they can manage their accounts as well as receive enhanced content and it would be nice to see PDF downloads of back-issues of Radcom.
All news articles should contain sharing links, and commenting facilities. Perhaps some sort of integration with social media could be helpful too.
The RSGB website is of prime importance for amateur radio in the UK. It needs to sell the hobby to all newcomers but in particular those at the younger end of the age spectrum. A modern well designed website will hopefully help grasp their attention and hopefully encourage take up of an interesting and diverse hobby.