As a government agency that is responsible for the Canadian Space Program, the CSA is involved in the exploration of space and the development and application of space knowledge in order to benefit Canadian citizens, as well as the rest of the world. The agency is involved in a range of space activities, which include:

1. Design, development, and launch of satellites for communications, earth observation, military use, and scientific research
2. Development of space rovers used in deep space exploration
3. International Space Station activities in partnership with Europe, United States, Russia, Japan, and others
4. Scientific study and research
5. Training of astronauts

The Canadian Space Agency has been involved in a number of space missions such as:

1. OSIRIS-Rex – a mission in partnership with NASA aimed at mining an asteroid and returning it to earth
2. NEOSSat – the launch of a family of satellites, which are designed to detect and track asteroids and space debris
3. ExoMars – An ESA mission in partnership with various space programs from all over the world, including the Canadian Space Program

Logo & Branding

The CSA’s logo clearly takes a leaf out of NASA’s book 😉 However it is not present on the website, having been replaced by regular html text of their name. Oddly none of the brand colors or logo elements are present either, leaving a severe lack of branding throughout and a range of missed opportunities that would have helped the citizens, that footed the bill, a much more recognisable brand to stand behind. Even their most recognisable asset, Astronaut Chris Hadfield, isn’t present.

Layout & Content

For some reason the responsibility of publishing the agency’s media content has been taken out of their hands and the site has lots of very basic issues to overcome. These include broken images in the homepage, lack of intuitive navigation and use of stock images. Viewing the site in tablet devices is almost impossible as the homepage slide images have no textual clues as to where they lead, the navigation links vanish on scrolling and the social media icons distort the footer area.

Usability & SEO

The agency is making life difficult for Google to efficiently crawl and index just the correct urls due to a range of issues. This includes 1468 pages with duplicate meta titles due to the content management system being configured to generate 2 urls for many of the pages – one with capitalized urls and one with lowercase urls, such as bioMacLean and biomaclean. Navigating the site is tricky to say the least, due in part to the 8000 or so broken links visitors and Googlebot encounter.

Website Statistics – 2017

Call to Action

The website has no real calls to action despite their interest in encouraging visitors to attend their single upcoming event and to request schools to invite their astronauts for a visit. The contact page is cluttered and has no contact form, however, the footer area does contain links to social profiles, so it is easier to keep updated on twitter instead. Basically they don’t want you to contact them. Which is their choice. Or could just be a result of ineffective web marketing.