but suggests most councils are not doing much about it
- County council case study featured in the briefing shows £700K of non-cashable efficiency gains from increased website take-up
- 11.4m people (20% of internet users) visited council sites in May 2005 with users showing high levels of satisfaction
- Hits on May’s county council election coverage show importance of seasonal and periodic events for driving take-up
- Councils appear to be doing little to promote the availability of information and services from their websites
A new briefing from Socitm Insight, based on information gathered through its website take-up service introduced a year ago, highlights the importance of website take-up but also suggests that councils are not, as yet, making much effort to increase it.
The Socitm Insight website take-up service provides information to participating authorities about the total number of unique visitors to their sites, as well as a wealth of other information about the reasons visitors are going to the site, how they got there, what the experience was like, and whether they are likely to visit again. The service also provides workshops for participating authorities to compare experience and best practice on take-up.
Analysis of the results from May 2005 across the subscriber sample, which includes all types of UK council, together with the experience exchanged at a subscriber workshop on 27 June, has allowed Socitm Insight to draw some conclusions about website take-up which have general application for councils across the UK.
The opportunity for councils to identify significant non-cashable efficiency gains, using information from the Insight website take-up service is highlighted through a case study presented at the July workshop by subscriber Warwickshire County Council.
The council calculated that increased website traffic had led to 646,818 visits which would otherwise have resulted in a contact with the council, utilising valuable officer time. Over a year this officer time was estimated to amount to 53,901 hours, which at a direct staff cost of £13.13 per hour, leads to a total of £707,727 saved per year because customers used self-service facilities for handling their requests through the website.
The briefing also shows how seasonal and periodic events can lead to significant increases in website take-up. Evidence for this comes from feedback from council webmasters in connection with coverage of the county council elections in May 2005. Northamptonshire CC, for example, found that more than half the number of visitors that normally come to the home page in a whole month, visited the election result page in just four hours on the Friday after the elections.
However, information from the website take-up service consistently shows that fewer than 1 in 5 visitors to council websites come as a result of promotional activity (19.7% in May 2005). Most visitors find council sites via Google (29.4%), by guessing the website address (18.5%), or because they work for the council (25.5%).
Overall, the website take-up service results for May show that
- An estimated 11.4m visitors came to local government websites in that month, amounting to about 10% of the population and more than 20% of those who use the Internet.
- Local residents (39.4% of all visitors) form the largest group visiting council sites.
- 79.1% of visitors are between 26 and 55 years old. On average for each council 59% of website visitors are women.
- In more than 80% of cases they found all or part of the information they are looking for
- Visitors are very well satisfied with the clarity of presentation of the information.
- Over 83% expressed the likelihood of the website being their first port of call in future compared with just 9% who did not.
- Job vacancies are the most frequent reason for visiting council websites — over four times more than the next specific reason (planning applications).
According to Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager for Socitm Insight, information emerging from the website take-up service suggests that councils should be doing more to promote take-up: "We know from the e-citizen national project that there is a whole population out there ready to use council websites, and that getting them to do so will bring tangible benefits in terms of efficiency gains and increased satisfaction with the council. However, it seems that councils have to date invested little in promotion, concentrating perhaps on getting the website right as a facility to offer. Now is the time to change priorities."
Building usage of council websites: summary of findings from the Socitm Insight.
website take-up service Issue 2 is a 12pp briefing. It is available free of charge to all subscribers of Socitm Insight and its website take-up service, and costs £20 to others. It can be ordered from www.socitm.gov.uk
Further information
Martin Greenwood Tel: 01926 498703
Programme Manager, Socitm Insight E-mail: martin.greenwood@socitm.gov.uk
Vicky Sargent, Socitm Press Officer
Tel: 01608 730538 Email: vicky.sargent@socitm.gov.uk
Notes for Editors
The Socitm Insight website take-up service is run in association with Nielsen NetRatings (formerly RedSheriff) a web analytics company with extensive experience of site measurement and qualitative and quantitative research for public sector organisations.
Subscribers receive:
- qualitative and quantitative information about visitors to their website(s)
- benchmarking of visitor information against that of other participating local authorities
- analysis of all the results from all participants by month and type of authority
- summary report of the key messages, lessons learnt and case studies
- information sharing workshops with other subscribers.
A one year subscription to the Website take-up service costs £950 for an existing Socitm Insight subscriber (£750 for shire district subscribers) or £1,950 for other local authorities.
