31 May 2016
The States of Jersey’s website (www.gov.je) has taken first place in the Sitemorse UK Local Government quarterly index for the second time in nine months.
Sitemorse, which audits a wide range of public and private sector websites, published the results of its latest (second calendar quarter) index this week, in which Jersey was assessed alongside 405 other local government websites in the UK. Jersey has consistently ranked in the top 25 since October 2014 and having been second in Q1 of 2016 is now back in the top position.
It was judged on:
- accessibility – making sure the site, including pages and pdfs, meet accessibility standards
- functionality – ensuring that the website is free from broken links
- HTML – code quality
- performance – maximising the speed at which pages load
- email – checking that email addresses are still valid and working
Ranked immediately below Jersey were Oxford City Council in second place and Scottish Borders in third.
Internet Manager, Geraldine Cardwell, said “We’ve consistently ranked highly in the Sitemorse results but I’m delighted that gov.je has reached the top position again. This reflects not only the hard work put in by the team but also the ambition to ensure we are continually following best practice.
"Our priority is responding to the needs of the public and for the past year our focus has been on improving usability and accessibility across the site.
"Gov.je is integral to the eGov programme, the wider digital strategy for Jersey and for enabling us to forge ahead with channel shift, so it’s important we know we are heading in the right direction. With more than 10,000 pages gov.je is a large site, as well providing an extremely useful benchmark we also rely on Sitemorse to regularly scan the site and automatically alert us to problems.”
Commenting on Jersey’s ranking David Harper of Sitemorse said “Continually working through the reports that we provide has enabled Jersey to maintain top rankings over the past 2 years. They have also spent time on the design of their website to minimise future issues. We are delighted that the diligent approach to website governance and the improved experience for their users has resulted in a well deserved second occasion at the top of the UK Council leader board.”
gov.je