The Website Assessment Service is provided by Socitm's Better connected project team. It covers a number of perspectives about the state of development of a specific website in any part of the public sector. It consists of several elements, ecah of which can be ordered separately:

• Standard professional review
• Technical accessibility review (with RNIB)
• Usability and accessibility review (with Usability Exchange)
• Readability review (with The Writer)  

Please note that this service is not available between November and March as the team is fully occupied in Better connected work over that period.

The Website Take-up Service has been developed to help local authorities understand much more about the profile of their website visitors and their needs.  Participating councils get information about the total number of unique visitors to their sites, why people are visiting, how they got there, what the experience was like, and whether they are likely to visit again.

Overview of Website take-up service

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 uses software developed by rol (owners of Govmetric, a complimentary product). 

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

·                free places at information sharing workshops with other subscribers

The service has been operational since April 2004. Currently, 87 local authorities participate. 

Visitor survey

The information is collected through a short exit survey added to participating authorities’ websites and launched (by a piece of code invisible to the user) as every fifth visitor leaves the site.  The software prevents repeat invitations (through use of cookies), whether or not the respondent has said “yes” or “no”, but, whenever the survey is updated (usually every 12 months), earlier invitations are ignored .

The survey asks sixteen questions and takes between three and four minutes to complete. Supporting software collects the answers and analyses results in a variety of ways, allowing subscribers to look at findings from their own website and compare them with findings from the rest of the subscriber group. The questionnaire is normally updated once a year. 

This list of questions comes from the latest version of the survey implemented in January 2008.  (Note: Several of the options allow free text alternatives)

Intro      Would you like us to help you?

Q1        How did you find out about the website? (13 options)

Q2        In the last 6 months, approximately how many times have you visited this website?  (6 options)

Q3        What was your main purpose for coming to the website today?  (18 options),

Q4        If you had not come to the website for this purpose, what would be your preferred way of contacting the council?  (7 options)  

Q7        How would you rate your satisfaction with the following features of this website (on a scale of 1 to 5)?

·                General look and feel

·                Ease of getting around the site

·                Ease of finding specific information

·                Usefulness of the site search

·                Value of the information

Q8        How likely are you to return to this website in the future? (on a scale of 1 to 5)

Q9        Overall, how satisfied are you with your visit today? (on a scale of 1 to 5)

Information about visitor – entirely optional

Q10      Please select your age range from dropdown list?  (8 options)

Q11      Are you male or female or prefer not to say?

Q12      Please enter your postcode if you are a UK resident

Q13      Which of the following applies to you? (10 options)           

Q14      Which one of the following groups do you consider you belong to? (16 options)

Q15      If your use of the internet is impeded by any of the following, please indicate how (6 options)

Q16      Please add any more comments about our website below, but note that we cannot reply directly to comments you make here

We have no equivalent service for sectors other than local government at this stage.  If there were sufficient numbers of similar organisations, we would be interested in exploring a comparable facility which would ask a combination of similar questions tailored to the market in question.

Please contact Terry Madgwick for further information (terry.madgwick@socitm.gov.uk / 01483 855288)