States launch mobile website

​People in Jersey will now be able to access a mobile version of the States of Jersey website on their smartphones.

 

The new site, https://m.gov.je, will allow people on the move to get travel and weather updates as well as the latest job vacancies.

 

The site will also be useful for Islanders collecting passengers at the ports as they can check live arrival and departure information from their smartphones. 

 

Operations Director from Back to Work, Ian Burns, is pleased jobseekers can now access vacancies from their phone  “We often speak to jobseekers who do not have regular access to a computer but do own a smartphone. This site is a great new tool for those looking for a job and we are planning to further improve the facility in March.”

 

 

The weather information includes Jersey Met Office forecasts for the next 24 hours as well as the five day outlook, which users can ‘pin’ to their phone’s start screen. Tide tables and the shipping forecast are also expected to be of interest to boat owners.

 

Web Services Manager Marcus Ferbrache, who has overseen the project, says “More than a third of visits to our gov.je website are made using either tablets or smartphones and for many people this is their main way of accessing the internet.

 

“We therefore need to make it much easier to use our website on these devices, reducing the need to zoom in to read content on a small screen. In addition, we have purposely kept the page design simple to minimise the amount of data downloaded, which fortunately reduces the roaming charges if accessing the pages from France or the UK.”

 

 

The new site comes at the beginning of a programme that in the coming months will see all States of Jersey websites working equally well on a smartphone as they do on a laptop or desktop computer.

 

Explaining the decision by the team to create the website rather than develop an app, Mr Ferbrache added “The gov.je mobile site is useable on almost any smartphone whereas app development is more expensive and would require separate versions for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows phones.”

 

The States would welcome feedback from users, including suggestions for future features and content.