The survey asks why visitors have come to the website, what information or services they were seeking and whether they have been able to do what they came to the website to do. It also asks how they would have contacted the council if not by the website (answer: predominantly by phone).
144 councils in England, Scotland and Wales, 33% of the total, participate in the service, which collects around 25,000 completed surveys - an average of 200 per council - per month.The survey provides a wealth of information to inform website improvement including the services most requested, user demographics and, crucially, details about the number and type of enquiries that fail and are likely to reappear through other channels as ‘avoidable contacts’. We have selected some headline results from the service for users of LocalGov.co.uk
Click here for historical data
Results for June 2010
Results for June 2010 are based on a sample of 136 local authorities and results for June 2009 on a sample of 118 local authorities.
23,435 surveys completed this month
48% with customer feedback comments
Table 1: average visitors to UK sites by council type
In May 2010, 7,870,002 unique visitors came to the sites of participating authorities. If we extrapolate these figures across the UK, then we find that 20.6m visitors used local government websites in that month. If we exclude business visitors (14.58%), this equates to around 29% of the population (approx 60m).
| Council type | 2010 | 2009 | % difference |
|
Shire county
|
104,088
|
100,539
|
4%
|
|
Shire District
|
23,489
|
23,973
|
-2%
|
|
London borough
|
94,530
|
90,857
|
4%
|
|
Metropolitan district
|
96,603
|
78,650
|
23%
|
|
Unitary (E)
|
70,926
|
68,834
|
3%
|
|
Unitary (W)
|
44,674
|
40,862
|
9%
|
|
Unitary (S)
|
47,945
|
47,407
|
1%
|
|
Estimate for all UK
|
20.6million
|
19.6 million
|
5%
|
Table 2: Most visited service areas January
The same services tend to feature in our ‘top ten’ sought by website users, but in a different order, depending on the time of year – eg schools information moves up the list in December. Knowing which are top services for your council is essential information for designing the website and increasing online take-up and improving success in achieving tasks.
Top 10 service areas 2010
%
Top 10 services areas 2009
%
(different questions asked)
Job vacancies
12.51%
Job vacancies
13.89%
Libraries
8.67%
Leisure facilities
6.93%
Leisure facilities
7.07%
Libraries
5.91%
Rubbish collection
6.08%
Schools/youth
5.85%
Schools/youth
5.56%
Rubbish collection
5.21%
Planning
5.09%
Planning
4.98%
Housing
4.45%
Events Information
4.63%
Council tax
4.23%
Housing
3.91%
Family history
4.21%
Council tax
3.48%
Events information
4.02%
Family history
3.56%
Total %
61.89%
58.36%
Table 3: Net visitor satisfaction January
These figures are calculated by subtracting those expressing overall dissatisfaction with the website from those expressing overall satisfaction. Clearly, satisfaction has decreased since 2009. This may be due to websites deteriorating or to customer expectations of them increasing – or most likely, a mixture of both.
| Visitor satisfaction | 2010 | 2009 | % change |
| Highest | 66.67% | 54.13% | 23.1% |
| Upper quartile | 42.03% | 40.50% | 3.8% |
| Median | 33.33% | 33.33% | 0.0% |
| Lower quartile | 26.98 % | 23.81% | 13.3% |
| Lowest | -6.25% | -6.67% | -6.3% |
Table 4: Failure to find information
| Failure to find information | 2010 | 2009 | % change |
| (Low= good performance; high = poor performance) | |||
| Lowest | 7.94% | 11.56% | -31.3% |
| Lower quartile | 16.26% | 16.82% | -3.3% |
| Median | 20.16% | 19.71% | +2.2% |
| Upper quartile | 24.39% | 23.97% | +1.8% |
| Highest | 42.39% | 34.21% | +23.9% |
