Summer 2010
Calderdale Council website
The web team are continually looking at ways to improve the Calderdale Council website.
The questions asked in the spring survey were to help us understand more about how and why people use the Calderdale Council website, and how we can better support people to do this.
The table below shows the different ways panellists access the Calderdale Council website:
| Access Council website from ..... | |
|---|---|
| Location | % of respondents |
| Do not use | 32% |
| Mobile / blackberry | 2% |
| From school or college | 1% |
| From home | 60% |
| From work | 19% |
| From the library | 5% |
Of those respondents who use the website (68%), the next table shows how they rate their experience when using the site:
| Website rating | |
|---|---|
| Rating | % of respondents |
| Very good | 8% |
| Good | 51% |
| Satisfactory | 38% |
| Poor | 3% |
| Very Poor | 1% |
Nearly 80% of website visitors said they were able to find what they were looking for. Only 7% said they did not find what they were looking for with 14% visiting the site just to browse.
We then asked panellists if they were aware of certain facilities that are currently on the website. The responses are shown below:
| Awareness of facilities on the website | ||
|---|---|---|
| Facility | Aware | Not aware |
| Pay parking fines | 24% | 76% |
| Pay your Council Tax | 36% | 64% |
| Request library books | 28% | 72% |
| Request replacement green / black bin bag | 26% | 74% |
| Make a planning application | 37% | 63% |
| Apply for Housing Benefit | 20% | 80% |
These results show that many of the facilities offered by the Council’s website are under-used as a large majority of Website users are not aware that they are available.
We then asked, if a number of other services were made available, would panellists be interested in using them. The table below shows the responses:
| Use of services on the Council website | |
|---|---|
| Service | % of respondents who would use |
| Receive alerts of planning applications in your area | 62.6% |
| Booking a registrar, registering a birth, marriage or death | 36.2% |
| Finding services and facilities in your area | 78.6% |
| Finding all events and activities across Calderdale | 76.4% |
| Booking a sports facility | 34.4% |
A number of interesting and useful ideas were also given to help us improve our website – we hope to incorporate some of these when we look at making future upgrades to the website.
