04 April: Measuring Success for Local Government Websites

By Shefik Bey

By Shefik Bey

In August 2007, UsabilityOne presented at the Local Government Web Network Meeting providing an insight to analysing website statistics to determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ongoing performance management of the site. This process guarantees the ability to measure the success of a council website.

For local government to have a website available to its customers 100% of the time is simply not enough. Council websites must quickly engage a diverse audience such as developers, students, new mothers, and tourists to name a few - and have the ability to measure the level of satisfaction for each of these audience groups.

Website statistics tell a story. Having the ability to analyse your site statistics leads to discovering who is coming to your site, what they are looking for and whether their needs are being met. Through analysis of website statistics, your site visitors will tell you what information is important to them.

Measuring the value of a website should be split into two key outcomes;

1. identify measurable tasks that Council visitors would typically perform, such as downloading a map or Council minutes, looking up opening hours or the cost of a planning permit;
2. allocate a value to these tasks. Benchmarking the tasks will provide initial results when conducting future review and monitoring of website targets.

Aligning these tasks with Council strategy and policy will provide council officers with a relevant measure of the website's performance and the ability to clearly determine if the tasks are achieving set targets and KPIs. This insight will also provide a clear direction for future development of the site.

For more information download the 'Website Customer Experience for Victorian Local Councils' report benchmarking the customer experience of 16 Victorian council websites. Also available is the 'Website Success: a practical framework for maximizing results' Whitepaper outlining the approach that UsabilityOne employs to help clients accurately measure the performance of their websites and continually improve performance. Both reports are available from the UsabilityOne website http://www.usabilityone.com