Website: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

The homepage of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is the most inviting of the ones that I have reviewed so far. The reason that I believe that this is the case is that it uses a white background, dispensing with borders frames, and employs simple graphic elements with primary colors and, most importantly, photographs of people.

Bicycle-Friendly = Friendly Bicyclists
For me nothing works like the faces of people as far as bringing warmth and positive regard to a website. I think that this is not only aesthetically pleasing but also politically important. If we want to build a bicycle-friendly community we should communicate that bicyclists are friends in and friends of that community.

(It helps to have photos in which the faces of cyclists - when they're not on their bikes - are not obscured by helmets and goggles. When I browse the SBL newsletter I experience the nagging sensation that the group photographs are largely interchangeable, since they appear to be populated by the same set of pastel-colored anonymous bicycling androids of varying heights and weights.)

Compact Appealing Homepage
I also find the design of the SFBike homepage appealing because it leaves behind a lot of the conventional homepage clutter. The artistic banner (perhaps a bit too artistic) features only a tag line (a must-have in my opinion) and a logo. Contact info is relegated to the bottom of the page, though, which may be problematic. The navigation bar beneath the banner is straightforward - no pull-down menus here - and select elements of it are replicated graphically in the right sidebar. These change as you move from page to page. Secondary pages also sport a detailed navigation panel specialized to their particular context. A limited number of articles are featured in the central content region of the homepage, resulting in a page size which keeps scrolling to a minimum - a real plus, as far as I'm concerned.

Shared Calendar Services
It is interesting to note how the usual calendar is replaced by Chain of Events list, which certainly has advantages when there are things happening almost everyday of the week, as is the case with SFBike. Notice also how the events calendar can be shared with users of either Google Calendar or Mozilla Firefox or Mac OS X.

When I think about this approach to the future of calendaring, I can hardy contain my enthusiasm. Gone are mailing list subscriptions that, although useful in their time, also added to my daily email grind. As an ABC calendar subscriber my calendar is updated automatically whenever a new event is scheduled, with each event carefully color-coded according to whether it is a business meeting, a social gathering, a group ride, or a volunteer opportunity, for example. The ABC staff is likewise relieved from having to send out streams of emails - dodging spam filters as they go - to notify interested community members of either new events or changes in ones already planned. Seems like a winner to me, although concerns having to do with such issues as "Google centricism" and creating a Web 1.0 / Web 2.0 digital divide do have to be addressed.

ABC En Español?
The SFBike homepage is the first one that I have reviewed that provides access to a limited portion of its website En Español. Personally, I feel that this is not only a good idea, but a flat-out requirement. We should commit to providing a Spanish-language support for most - if not all - of our website offerings and the construction of the revamped ABC website must take this into account so that such bilingual services can be implemented more easily.

Wear the Movement
As a closing note, it's fun to check out the SF Bicycle Coalition Store. The merchandise is not just your run-of0the-mill share the road T-shirts and much of it is modeled by adults and kids which makes it all that much more appealing. Attractive products that promote bicycling and bicycle awareness would seem to be a useful part of ABC's long-term fund-raising strategy.

Marc

Notes: Our Mission and "The Mores"

"First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?" - Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs

My thinking has changed significantly since I started this project in earnest a few weeks ago. My initial goal was to determine what constituted a "good" bicycle advocacy website in some general sense. But, as I viewed more and more sites and considered more and more options, I realized that my original question was too open-ended. I needed a focus and that meant that I needed to consider exactly what we - ABC - wanted to accomplish with our website and, by implication, with our organization.

This led me naturally to consider what our mission as a bicycle advocacy group was, or at least what I thought our mission might be, since the official statement of it "to promote bicycle transportation and use in the Metro Atlanta region" seemed sufficiently vague as to offer almost no guidance at all for my work. I needed a concrete statement, one that would help me with the organization of the website and one that I could use as a practical road map of sorts. I felt that the central elements of our website should correspond clearly and directly to these goals.

To that end I have constructed an operational statement of our mission - not an official one - that Rebecca has dubbed "The Mores". Here it is.

more people cycling
for more reasons
to more destinations
over more routes
more safely
in a more bicycle-friendly community

I have revised this statement a number of times and it is subject to change, but even it its current form it has helped me to think more clearly not only about the our website, in particular, but also about ABC's goals more generally.

Marc

Website: Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia

The website of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia is surprising in that it is so old-fashioned for a site serving such a large metropolitan area. Nonetheless it has an interesting lesson to offer with regard to putting a website together on the cheap, so to speak.

Outsourcing Functionality
The BCGP website is an illustration of how a conventional - i.e. Web 1.0 - website can provide Web 2.0 functionality by utilizing services from external providers. So, for example, a couple of handy videos demonstrating how to load your bike on the rack of a SEPTA bus are actually hosted by Google Video. Similarly their advocacy director runs a blog entitled Philadelphia Bicycle News that is hosted by Blogspot, the same Google service that back-ends this blog.

To Mash-Up or Not to Mash-Up
One advantage of this mash-up approach is that it a provides a way to manage content without resorting to the use of a heavy-duty content management system (CMS). The disadvantages are that it can result in jarring transitions of look-and-feel and lead visitors to external sites without a bread-crumb trail to follow back to our own. The fact that content contributors have to use a variety of tools to do their jobs is not as much as disadvantage as it might appear at first, since these individual tools are typically designed to be easy to use, especially when compared to an industrial-strength CMS.

As I noted in a previous post, the Bike Pittsburgh site embeds a Google spreadsheet pretty effectively in their site Submit Your Miles page. It seems that embedding a Google calendar may be straightforward as well.




Marc

Website: Bike Pittsburgh

Without a doubt the award for the website with the most artistic banner goes to Bike Pittsburgh. Not only is it visually interesting, a white "paper doll" cut-out frame with images and logos inset, but the frame and the photos contained within it change when moving from page to page. It does, though, take up a lot of valuable space. At first I thought that it was a novel sort of navigational panel, especially given its many segments and an abundance of arrows, but mousing over it reveals nothing underneath. It would be nice if it were functional as well as decorative.

All in all this is a very effective site. Above the banner is a "My Profile" link that provides a way for members to login. A horizontal bar of drop down menus immediately below leads to all the major features of the site. The homepage itself contains the mix of news, action alerts, and calendar that seem to be de rigueur for bicycle advocacy websites these days. In addition to these there are handy search and newsletter sign-up functions. As has also become commonplace, a blog seems to be the main vehicle for posting (presumably) official content. The site also supports message board and boasts many other membership benefits.

Some interesting features to note are an "In a Crash?" resource, which seems to be becoming a standard offering and a more somewhat unusual "Submit Your Miles" facility, which may have more to do with bicycle ego than bicycle advocacy, but is a good example of how Google Docs can backend useful website content. The "Getting Around Town" resource is a treasure trove of conventional maps and cyclist-contributed mash-ups.

Notes
Handmade website design by ClickNathan.com
Wordpress appears to be used to support some features of the site.

Marc

Website: Washington (D.C.) Area Bicyclist Association

What can I say, I love the look-and-feel of the website of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, which advocates for bicycling for fun, fitness and affordable transportation in our nation's capital. It is clean and compact and ultra-efficient, reminiscent of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance site, but simpler - with a no muss, no fuss, let's get down to work attitude. I understand that such a minimal approach doesn't work for everyone and it certainly goes against the warm-and-fuzzy aura prized by most community advocacy organizations.

Emphasis on Maps
Surprisingly the visual element that dominates the top of the page is a map of the District with the accompanying link "Download Bike Maps Here". Anyone who has ever staffed an ABC event table, knows that the most popular handouts are the fine bicycle usability maps that have been created for the Emory area and Midtown. The elevation of the access to maps to such a prominent position on this website suggests a recognition that this a much sought-after service and a common reason for people to visit the WABA site.

Confidence Game
There are a number of gems on this site. One of them, an education offering probably not unlike our Effective Cycling classes, is called "Confident City Cycling". For me it was worth a visit to this site if only to realize how restructuring a class could make it a so much more compelling for our constituents. When you talk to people in the Atlanta area who contemplate bicycling on city streets their most often expressed concern is safety and the fact that they lack confidence in their ability to ride in city traffic. (I can't say that I have ever met anyone who has expressed a desire to bicycle more effectively.) If what we're about is getting more people to use bicycles as a transportation alternative then this approach would appear to have much to recommend it.

Notes
The WABA Store features the purchase of memberships in its list of "products". This is a clever application of an on-line store and utilizes the fact that people often check-out the shopping opportunities when they peruse a website.

This site has no user-supplied content, no blogs, no forums, no photo galleries, as far as I can tell.

Marc

Website: East Bay Bicycle Coalition

The East Bay Bicycle Coalition, working in Alameda and Contra Costa counties in California, has a simple but effective website design with a strong orientation toward user-supplied content.

The Blog's the Thing
Like many current bicycle advocacy websites the EBBC one uses blogs, not as a secondary offering of the site, but as a primary "late breaking" content management system. To this end the prominent central pane of the homepage is a blog which appears to accept posts from EBBC staff and members. (I am not sure what moderation is in effect to make sure that the blog represents posts suitable for the homepage of the website.) Interestingly enough, the site supports traditional user forums, although the distinction between a these forum and the blogs on the site are not immediately clear to me.

More User-Supplied Content
Also, like many sites, the EBBC homepage offers a prominent column for upcoming events, the interesting twist being that users are invited to "add a new event". Similarly the site sports a "Gallery", not an unusual feature of a community website, but this one appear to accept photos from registered users. (Again, I'm don't know what moderation is in place to screen such submissions.)

Hazard Report
As an example of the extreme user content focus, there is a main navigation selection labeled simply "content". Admittedly it leads to only once choice, but that in itself is an interesting one. It is a facility whereby a user can submit a "Hazard Report". When I mentioned this to Rebecca she reminded me that our Peds colleagues offer a similar service by way of the very comprehensive "Take Action" portion of their website.

Notes
Although not explicitly credited, Drupal appears to be the CMS used for this site.

Marc

Website: Indiana Bicycle Coalition

The website of the Indian Bicycle Coalition is, for the most part, undistinguished, but I bring it to your attention for one very good reason. "Free Classified Ads" is featured as one of its main menu navigation selections.

Many bicycle-related sites offer such advertising, but it is typically buried somewhere in a message board or a forum. Positioning classified ads prominently on the homepage has a number of advantages. It brings visitors to site who are looking to buy used bicycles or bicycle gear, a not insignificant number people if the activity on Craig's List is any indication. These visitors, who have a prima facia interesting in bicycling, may explore other parts of the website and, possibly, consider becoming a member of the sponsoring organization. Also, if the ability to offer a product for sale is restricted to members, then that perk itself may be a motivation for signing up.

Of course there is a cost in policing a classified ads service and, as the disclaimers on the IBC site indicate, liability issues to be aware of.

Marc