Review use of website backlog page

[kellylee-gds]

What

Understand how the backlog page on the Design System website is being used, with a view to retire if not visited.

Why

The backlog page on the website is out of date with the GitHub community backlog.

Who needs to know about this

Charlotte, Kelly, Senior Performance Analyst
If we choose to deprecate - Developer, Content Designer

Done when

• Use GA to understand traffic to the backlog page
• Agree whether to retire or remain

Next steps

[outcome of decision]
Investigate where website backlog is linked to from other resources

[kellylee-gds]

@christopherthomasdesign @CharlotteDowns @trang-erskine I had a look at historical server logs data and average fortnightly page views of the website backlog page were around 678

[SaraC19]

Just adding here what I sent to Kelly in Slack:

So a few things (data from 17th Aug - 20th Sept 2021):
(Note that I think some of this data is a little skewed from the community events we've had this month!)

• It doesn't get a super high volume of traffic but it is a consistent amount (report attached)
• Most of the traffic comes from /community (which is in the top navigation bar)
• It's the most clicked on page for users that visit /community
• Once a user is there, there are a lot of clicks off into GitHub (report attached)

I don't think the page is perfect, but it does suggest people are engaging with it and interested

GitHub clicks from the backlog

Traffic summary

[christopherthomasdesign]

I'd be tempted to keep the page, but remove the long list of backlog items there. Seeing as they duplicate what's on GitHub and need to be manually kept up-to-date with GitHub. And probably make the link to the GitHub slightly more prominent.

Depending on how we re-structure the backlog, we might want to revisit the content of the page more generally.

[trang-erskine]

Thanks for sharing the data Sara. So interesting that access denied pattern is the most clicked on backlog item alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog#158. The next 2, filter a list and pagination is expected.

I'm also in favour of Chris's suggestion to remove the list.

[christopherthomasdesign]

My guess is 'access denied' is the most clicked on because it's top of the list 😆

[SaraC19]

Yeah Chris is right - you do generally see that the first thing in a list is always clicked on the most (on GOV.UK especially). Removing the list sounds like a good idea!

[CharlotteDowns]

I also agree to move the list from the website page.

[CharlotteDowns]

For now we have agreed to keep the page, iterate the content and remove the list.

We are going to test our prototypes with users to confirm our decision.