This fortnight's staff pick is remarkable in that it's the first, and currently, only consultation from the City of South Perth. Second, it's the first time a project from Western Australia has been selected in our 'Staff Pick' series. And third, this site is almost perfect!

Read why below.

Site: City of South Perth

Project: City of South Perth Parking Strategy - Have Your Say

Publish Date: 07 July 2015

Topic: Public Parking

Tools: Map, Forum, Surveys & Forms

Widgets: Sign up Banner, Custom, Key Dates, Life Cycle, FAQ & Document Library

What we like:

1. Choice of tools: The mapping tool is ideal for this type of project. Participants are asked to locate areas with parking issues and submit improvement suggestions. In addition, the forum tool captures big picture ideas and 2 surveys, one of which is a RSVP form, gathers further information from participants.
   
   
2. Call-to-action: We absolutely love the repeated calls-to-action throughout the site. There is a "have your say" call to action in the project title, in the clickable image on the right, in the project description and finally, in the tools tab. 
   
   
3. Clickable Image: With some basic HTML programming, the team has created a clickable image (see the top widget). This drives visitor traffic to certain parts of the site. To implement, upload an image, create a custom widget, and include a link to make the image clickable. If you want to learn how to do this, take a look at these instructions.
   
   
4. Project description: Not only does the description contain the abovementioned calls-to-action, but also live links to all the tools available. Additionally, the context and objective of the consultation are clearly articulated. A short description is always preferable, but if the language is clear and well-formatted, a longer description can suit the consultation.
   
   
5. Framing of discussion topics: The map showcases local areas with parking problems and encourages user participation in finding parking solutions. The related survey is simple, short and to-the-point. Importantly, discussion topic questions are positively framed and open-ended, using what, when, why, how and when prompts. This means that participants cannot simply answer with yes or no responses and must reply in a meaningful way. This is the best way to frame questions in order to get quality qualitative engagement.
   
   
6. Printable survey: This allows participants to print a hard copy version of the survey. In this case, the survey isn’t a PDF print of the EHQ survey, but you could achieve the same result with our super efficient survey print function.

For further consideration:

1. No faces: The project is missing a human touch as there are no photos of people anywhere on the site. The banner and project image do not contain people and there are no other photos in a gallery or 'Who's Listening' widget.  

2. Pin both surveys: Only one of the 2 surveys created for this consultation is pinned to the front page. It might be worthwhile to pin both surveys and/or forms to the front page to eliminate the need for an extra click for the end user.

OVERALL: The City of South Perth have started out with a bang in their online engagement endeavours! This project has many positives and with some great marketing, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of meaningful engagement from the public. If the South Perth engagement team continue to create these type of well-executed EngagementHQ projects, they will be very well placed to obtain ongoing and effective online engagement from their community. We look forward to seeing more.

NOTE: The above is based on a visit to the site on 17 July 2015. Changes made to the project after that date may have altered the appearance of the project.