6 August 2007
UK local council websites offer users a poor online experience
The websites of local authorities in the UK are failing their public because they are difficult to navigate and do not make critical information easy to find. Key tasks, like paying council tax online, are made unnecessarily difficult and in some places impossible, purely because of inadequate attention to basic web usability practices.
In a web usability survey examining 20 of the UK's leading local council websites, only four achieved a score of more than 60%, with more than half of those sites scoring less than 50%. An average usability rating of 45.5% across all 20 sites suggests local authorities need to review the online service they provide to the public.
The Webcredible study benchmarked 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. With a growth of 27% in council website usage between 2005 and 2006, councils are in a strong position to use their websites to improve their communication and access to services, as well as achieve significant cost savings.
According to Trenton Moss, director at Webcredible: “The report serves to highlight what UK local authorities need to do in order to improve the usability of their websites, which would in turn ensure that these websites help deliver a better overall service to their communities.”
Two London Boroughs, Camden and Lambeth, were found to offer users the best online experience, scoring 68 and 67 out of a potential 100 respectively. Another London borough, Barking and Dagenham, scored lowest at 24. Other council websites benchmarked included Salford City (scoring 44), Wrexham CBC (26), South Norfolk DC (62) and Shropshire CC (44).
Each website was evaluated against the 20 best practice guidelines and rated 0 to 5, with 5 the highest score. With 20 guidelines in all, websites could be assigned a total Usability Index rating out of 100.
The full results of this study are published in a white paper entitled Local Council Websites: Design by Committee: A usability study of the leading UK local council websites. It is available for download at www.webcredible.co.uk/council.
About Webcredible
Founded in 2003, Webcredible is a user experience consultancy, dedicated to making websites easy to use, accessible to all and ultimately more effective. The UK-based consultancy offers a wide range of services, including user-centred design, usability & accessibility testing, accessible web design, an accessible CMS, as well as a comprehensive training programme.
With almost 200,000 monthly website visitors and a long list of global clients in the private and public sector, including T-Mobile, Norwich Union, eBay, the BBC and the World Health Organization, Webcredible is widely regarded as one of the most respected consultancies in the user experience industry.
The consultancy brings an unrivalled passion and enthusiasm to their work and their uniquely open and collaborative approach to projects ensures clients can fully understand and contribute to the process while gaining on-the-job training and knowledge transfer.