Northumberland County Council's Vision - Based on Solid
Research
The council undertook extensive usability
testing with citizens of the county, local businesses and staff,
in order to fully understanding what customers really want
from a council web site.
The research revealed that in general, people
are very impatient when online. In the test environment, they
switched from looking for the perfect answer, to any answer within
2 minutes.
The conclusion drawn form this was that:
“We have 2 minutes to get people to the page
that shows the information they are looking for, otherwise it will
have resource implications”. After 2 minutes the user begins
to get frustrated and switches their aims to searching for more
generic information that may help, looking for any way to get an
answer.
Testing also reinforced how vitally important
the navigation and page layout is. The most effective page layouts
are those which allow people to find what they were looking for
within their immediate field of vision.
The testing confirmed that any information
that is shown below the fold is far less likely to be found by most
users and that less I.T proficient users seem unable or unwilling
to scroll the screen down to look for more information
Further research was conducted by examining
the top 20 local government sites in the SOCITM Better Connected
report. Northumberland has been quite open in its desire to study
the best of what’s already out there on existing council websites,
in order to learn from their success and create one of the best
local government sites in the UK.
The Council needed to create content for over
700 local services, including online application forms and online
payments for council taxes and other services. The vision was
for a truly interactive site which would reduce the need for
residents, businesses and visitors to the area having to contact
the Council by ‘phone’ or by visiting the council offices.
To read more about the Northumberland CC project go to
Key Features
Technology Platform
Overview
or contact susan.conroy@unified.co.uk
or by telephone 01753 775050