Council websites a step change in improvement - martin greenwood

Council websites: a step change in improvement ?

Martin Greenwood

Never a better time than now

• Government desperate to save money• …..and to be transparent

• So much now depends on self-service

• But all is not well…………………

Better connected for business (July 8)

‘Patchy performance at best’For majority,• Inconsistent implementation• Lack of care over customer journey

For minority,

little or no effort has as yet been made to comply,

owing to lack of awareness, commitment or

resources

14 July Building perfect council website '10 3

The Birmingham City website redesign

• Web project management in future needs to be applied at a more senior level

• Web as a whole should be seen as the pivotal channel that it is and must have a higher profile at executive level

• Web projects should be service-led rather than technology-led

Independent review, June 2010


The Birmingham City website re-design

Recommendation

• Director solely responsible for governance of web-based services – a “Web Services Director”.

• If not feasible, Customer Services should be responsible for the web.

Independent review, June 2010


The Birmingham City website re-design

Can the customers and citizens of

Birmingham find what they’re looking for?

The simple answer is yes, in broad terms,

although more work could now be done.

(Unnamed) author of report

But absolutely no evidence for saying this !


Crisis of governance

• Do we need a website at all?


Crisis of governance

• How well is the website performing?

• What should we do to improve performance?


The key arguments

• Web is cheapest and most used channel • Usage is also increasing steadily• But visit failure is increasing (and visitor

satisfaction is dropping)• This creates costly and avoidable contact in other

channels (esp phone) • The web must work right first time, every time• You need the management information to

communicate this

14 July Building perfect council website '10

Usage continues to rise

Increases in number of visits.. Now running at 32m per month


But so does visit failure

‘Not found what you were looking for?’

‘9.3% increase in 18 months’ 14 July Building perfect council website '10 11

And visitor satisfaction drops

’13.2% drop in 18 months’


Website performance

The website that succeeds get constant feedback from their customers as they seek to complete tasks on the website

The stranger’s long neck

(June 2010, Gerry McGovern)


Website performance

• Do you know what your customers think of your website?


Website performance

• Do you know what your customers think of your website?

• Some of you do, but not enough of you

Also important to find out,• Do you know what your customers do?


First steps with Google Analytics

Council Region Visits Page

Pages / Bounce Avge time % new visits(est) views

visit rate h:mm:ss

Shire county East 278552 773054 2.78 0.57 0:02:04 0.35

Shire district S East 39895 195034 4.89 0.35 0:03:44 0.44

Unitary (E) N East 162770 680676 4.18 0.38 0:02:37 0.36

Shire district East 44471 118231 2.66 0.49 0:02:01 0.70

Shire district East 39514 173083 4.38 0.22 0:03:24 0.44

Shire district W Mids 18968 81498 4.30 0.28 0:02:28 0.54

Unitary (W) Wales 57598 241242 4.19 0.33 0:02:23 0.35

Met district N West 102548 291641 2.84 0.48 0:01:58 0.46

Unitary (W) Wales 102548 668964 6.52 0.39 0:03:14 0.41


Task management

• You must measure success

• To improve, you must focus on top tasks

• And you must measure their success


We have identified ten things that council chief executives should ask about their websiteQ1 How much do failed website visits

cost your council?

Q2 What proportion of council enquiries

now come in via your website?

Q3 What are the top tasks that people

want to carry out on your website?


Task management

• More in BC2010.....

• But vital to engage with

decision-makers


A step change in improvement ?

• Any questions or comments?


Documents

Council websites a step change in improvement - martin greenwood