Stap isi

12 May 2009

Still no click love for local government

Bob Cranshaw alerts us to the latest Hitwise report on Australian government website traffic.

Although government website visits were up 10.4% in the year, and Australian government’s share of total traffic (2.4%) is higher than the U.S. (1.7%) and U.K. (0.9%), local government still ain’t getting much click love. About 0.14% of all Australian visits on the Internet.

The results are consistent with those of July 2008.

Of course it’s not just about the numbers. In local government, the first priority is usually to connect with your constituents – an exception might be where tourism is a key local industry – and so you’re looking to engage a large percentage of your constituents rather than a big number of visitors.

How?

Hitwise report a 16.1% increase in traffic from social media to government websites in the past year. For local government, 4.6% of visits originate from social networks and forums. That’s more than twice the number from print media (2.0%). Across government as a whole that trend is even more pronounced.

Search is far the biggest source of visits – an estimated 61.2% at the local level. Hitwise make the point that government is competing with the commercial sector for traffic and must get serious about SEO.

They also recommend that agencies determine which sites get most traffic for specific subjects, and feed those sites with government information.

Download the report here.

— b3rn   stats, the persuader   May 12, 07:26 PM   #   Comment

22 October 2008

The case for social media #3: Reach

Craig Thomler has just posted a very helpful article called Putting Australian government web traffic in perspective.

We – local government web workers – collect things like page views and visits, but we don’t have much context for these figures. It’s just another KPI that gives good graph.

A few NSW Councils have been sharing their stats on the LG Web Network. Over in the UK, a number of municipal bodies have made their’s public. See for example Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s website statistics. I hope to collate these figures soon in a table, anonymized, to allow some comparison.

But Craig Thomler’s calculations for July 2008, even if a bit out, confirm what we already know. That we’re not getting much attention.

• The total government sector (6,634 sites) accounted for only 2.26 percent of all tracked website visits by Australians.
• Local government’s 1,596 sites accounted for 6.51% of all Government traffic and 0.15% of visits to all tracked websites.
• The Bureau of Meteorology accounts for almost a quarter of all visits to Australian government sites!

The answer? Thomler says engage citizens on their own turf.

— b3rn   stats, the persuader, web metrics   Oct 22, 07:36 PM   #   Comment [1]

8 September 2008

The case for social media #1: How people use government websites

There’s a good case to be made for using social media as part of an online communications strategy based on how Australians currently access government services on the internet.

1. The internet is now the preferred way to contact government – but that desire is not being adequately met.
2. Users want convenience and time savings – but they also want the capacity to communicate with a ‘real’ person.
3. Government is good at informing constituents online – but not so good at empowering constituents to provide information themselves or otherwise transact with government.

Continued...

— b3rn   stats, the persuader   Sep 8, 08:12 PM   #   Comment [6]