Local councils in the UK have made considerable improvements to
their online services in the past year, according to web
consultancy firm Webcredible.
Its study shows a promising trend towards to better online
services, such as council tax payment and planning application
viewing provided to citizens in the UK.
The Webcredible
annual survey shows that six of the council websites lead their
peers with usability scores of 60% or over, whilst the vast
majority scored over 50%, and the average was 56.6%.
Last year's study revealed that more than half of websites
scored less than 50%, and concluded that with an average usability
rating of 45.5%, local authorities needed to review the online
service they provided to the public.
The leading councils this year were Clackmannanshire, Greenwich,
Haringey, Southwark, Brighton & Hove, and Merton.
Trenton Moss, director at Webcredible, said, "This positive
turnaround in online services ultimately means that these
authorities will benefit from improved communication with citizens
and significant cost savings.
"This year's study shows that council sites have been much
better at providing simple navigation of their websites and
prioritising and displaying key information.
"Areas for improvement include better form processing and error
handling, providing text resizing controls and progress indicators
to support users when transacting online."
The Webcredible study benchmarks the
Socitm Top 20 local authority websites against a set of 20 best
practice guidelines for ensuring optimum user experience. These
guidelines were developed by Webcredible specifically for local
authority websites.
Some key areas highlighted for improvement across the board
include:
*Displaying a prominent "contact us" link with phone number and
hours of operation (current average score 2 out of 5)
*Having clear text resizing controls at the top of the page
(current average score 1.1 out of 5)
*Providing a search function that understands common mistakes
and abbreviations (average score 2.1 out of 5)
For the full results go to:
www.webcredible.co.uk/council
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