A recent report published by Socitm insight has highlighted how local authorities can encourage members of the public to use their local council’s website to make applications, enquires and payments online, and indicates that detailed website statistics is the key to demonstrating this take up and improving the process in the future.

The Socitm insight report “Better marketed: achieving success with take-up of online services”* details how promoting online processes on council websites can make payments and enquiries easier for the customer, and reflect significant money saving benefits for the council.

The report also highlights, however, how councils are failing to utilize website statistics to drive take-up campaigns and capitalize on their increasing popularity.

Many councils currently use statistic services that offer general information about page views, unique users, popular pages and referrer information, but more specific information about user behaviour on the website is rarely available.

Detailed information, like that provided by SiteAnalyze, showing how people are using the website, the paths they are taking and the completion rate of online processes is crucial information when reviewing and improving take up of online services.

Where people are coming from and what are they searching for?

Part of encouraging people to use the council website to pay and perform transactions online is to make sure that people are able to reach the website easily and are directed to pages on the website that provide the best information possible.

The Search Terms feature of SiteAnalyze provides information on referrers, search terms used and also entry pages, enabling you to optimise your site to return the most relevant pages for customer searches on external search engines.

What paths do users take through the website and can I view individual user sessions?

An important part of understanding how visitors are using your site is being able to track visitors from when they enter the website to when they leave.

The Behaviour Tracking feature of SiteAnalyze provides the user with a detailed over view of the paths that people are taking through the website.

The path taken for each Individual User Session can also be followed.

Can I collect information about the completion rate of online forms and processes?

A large part of being able to judge how effective the take up of online services is on a website is having the ability to track the whole online process.

Just the number of people completing the process does not give the whole picture especially in regards to the total number that came to the relevant section, and the number that left the process ½ way through.

The Filters feature of SiteAnalyze eGov enables users to track multiple page processes on the website, to view the take up/drop out rate of online services.

This feature enables you to report on not only the number of completions of an online process, but also the number of people that have visited the relevant page where the process begins and the number of people that started the process but did not compete or submit the information.

* Better Marketed: achieving success with take up of online services, May 2007 A Socitm Insight Publication © Socitm 2007