Local government web sites are more accessible than those of central government

Directgov is one of the supersites that sees 82 per cent of central government traffic

When compared with central government web sites, those provided by local government are better equipped to give users what they are looking for, but leave them less satisfied, according to a report from local government IT body Socitm.

The report, Use of the Web – Local Government Compared with Central Government, incorporates data from its Website Take Up Service which measures use of local authority web sites and compares it with data from the Central Office of Information (COI), which looks at central government web site use.

Net visitor satisfaction, calculated by subtracting those who were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied from those who were satisfied or very satisfied, averages 45 per cent for central government sites, compared with 31 per cent for local government sites.

However, when it comes to whether or not visitors found what they were looking for, the average for local government sites was 54 per cent compared with 38 per cent for central government web sites.

Socitm argues that this latter measure is the most critical performance indicator for sites, because visitor failure is likely to lead to a requirement for phone contact with local government representatives, which is costly. Where the cost of a web enquiry may be 23p or less, phone enquiries cost more than £2.50. For this reason, Socitm believes that even the 54 per cent local government average should be much higher.

There were 38 million unique visitors to the 46 central government web sites reported on by COI for March 2010, of which 82 per cent were accounted for by the top 10 sites, including "supersites" Directgov, Business Link and NHS Choices, as well as www.hmrc.gov.uk.

Socitm’s estimated usage of all local government sites, also calculated for unique visitors, and based on an extrapolation of data from the 122 sites surveyed in the same month, was 23.5 million. Visits per visitor during the month were 1.52 for central government web sites and 1.48 for local government sites.

Finally, on site accessibility, there is a huge difference in results from the independent manual testing carried out on local government sites by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), with seven per cent achieving level A, and the far less rigorous self-testing by central government sites that report a 90 per cent success rate in achieving level A.