The UK government is spending significant time and energy in creating a new communications strategy embracing the online world - Digital by Default is its credo - and expects all its vast array of websites to meet the standard.

The Government Digital Strategy announced two years ago set out how government will redesign its digital services to make them so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will prefer to do so.

Sitemorse has been using its unique powerful software engine to benchmark the quality of sites in the government sector for a number of years, and there are some surprises in our second-quarter report.

The UK taxman HMRC and the Northern Ireland Department of Education retain places among the top three rated sites, but the website run by The Pensions Regulator has risen eleven places to take top spot with an overall score of 7.4 out of a possible 10 marks.

The Pensions Regulator, a non-departmental public body, is the regulator of work-based pension schemes in the UK. Three years ago the organisation's website rated 176th in our INDEX, with a score of 4.3/10, but the site has shown constant visible improvement in our benchmarks ever since.

We spoke to the Regulator's web team to find out what has been done to improve the site.

Lisa Sevell, Online Services Manager at The Pensions Regulator, told us: “I am delighted at this fantastic result. It’s a great testament to the hard work and effort our small team of specialists has put in to secure the top position in what is a competitive sector. We have an ambitious programme of site development work ahead of us and are looking forward to the challenge.”

Last year (FY 2013-14) Lisa says the regulator met the demands of delivering a quality service in the midst of extraordinary traffic growth and changing audiences, a trend the organisation has been experiencing for the past three years. Largely driven by employers and their agents seeking information and support with automatic enrolment, the regulator is delivering "a rolling programme of website improvements to ensure it remains optimised and relevant", she added.

Improving the customer experience by tailoring what online users need, and focusing on website accessibility improvements to achieve AA WCAG2.0 for the first time, has been central to the regulator’s strategy.

The team has also optimised organic search results to be highly findable online while delivering mobile responsive website design for customers. Specialist writers are used to ensure content is readable and easy to understand.

Online best practice can no longer include just websites but also mobile and social channels too - and social media channels including LinkedIn and Twitter are helping the regulator to build presence and engagement.

Big climbers in the latest central government benchmark include the Civil Service website (up 115 places to 31st overall), UK Trade & Investment (+126), Monitor - Independent Regulator of NHS Foundation Trusts (rising 129 places to 33rd overall), Transport for London (up 139 to 69th overall) and the Northern Ireland Legal Services Commission (rising 252 to enter the top 20 sites in 19th place this time).

 

About the INDEX

The scores for the Central Government table are created by Sitemorse (www.sitemorse.com) using its automated software that reads and reviews the first 125 pages of each site and places them in a ranked table based on User Experience (UX), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Search Capability (SEO).

The quarterly INDEX Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience.

Sitemorse services immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, help demonstrate real improvement and ensure you have control and confidence in your web presence.

They will help you minimise unnecessary risk, issues covering everything from compliance with web standards to helping you deal with malware, protect your brand across even a large web presence, and enhance search engine optimisation to help more potential customers find you. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. We offer a confidential internal 'company wide' website testing and benchmarking service - allowing you to review the position of all the sites in your organisation. Contact us to request further details and / or an example.

More information

• More information about our surveys and what they test can be found on our website http://www.sitemorse.com/index/