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Sunday, February 14, 2016 
Everyone wants their website to look great, right? But we often see organisations forget about the content. Not so at one local authority which has invested in improving the content it shares with its customers.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015 
Here’s a quantitative look at how user experience and usability can influence user conversion on an organisation’s own website.
by Sarah Gill
The experience of your target audience when interacting with your app or website on a mobile device should be an essential consideration in every digital communications plan.
Users form their emotional reaction to your organisation very quickly and if their information needs aren’t met swiftly, abandonment will surely follow.
Not to be confused with usability, the consideration of the user experience represents a holistic approach to all aspects of a user’s interaction with a business, it’s service and products. User experience and usability are terms often used interchangeably but there are key differences...
Sunday, November 8, 2015 
The Likeaword Consultancy report into council websites throws up some fascinating data. You can learn more in SOCITM's revamped Better Connected website which you can look at council websites authority-by-authority.
According very recent data collected and published by the Likeaword consultancy, there were 658,544,076 visits to local government websites in Great Britain in the year to 31 July 2015.
That’s 10.5 visits for every woman, man and child in our population, and by any measure a lot of people ‘visiting the council’ and forming opinions about it, through the website.
Do those running local authorities care enough about the sort of experience these huge numbers of visitors are having? Do they appreciate the sheer numbers involved? Or the pressing need to getting even more people doing their council stuff online?
Saturday, November 7, 2015 
A major piece of insight on council websites has been published by Ben Proctor of the Likeaword Consultancy. The numbers are impressive... more than 10 visits for every man, woman and child in the UK. But what do they mean for local government comms people? Isn't that just the web teams job? Actually, no. We asked Ben to interpret.
by Ben Proctor
The report in question which you can read here is an analysis of some key data points about visits to local authority websites in Great Britain. I asked every council for a small number of figures about visits to their websites and drawn some conclusions as a result.
It’s not all about the websites (except it is)
I am very aware that comms these days isn’t about getting hits on your website. It’s about digital engagement, community development, Instagram and SnapChat.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 
Many a council comms officer has been given a daft income target for web advertising at some point. Few have achieved significant returns. But a new initiative might just be the answer to this oft debated issue.
Many local authorities have considered carrying advertising on their websites before and decided that the time wasn’t right. The most common issues have tended to be that it wouldn’t deliver enough revenue to justify, 1 – hiring staff to implement the technology and manage relationships with advertisers, and 2 – the perceived compromises in carrying advertising; and also concerns over the types of advertisers to which they want to expose their audience, and to which they want to associate with their corporate brand.
Monday, November 25, 2013 
Next time you are building a new website, do make sure that you have a comms person on the team.
by GUEST EDITOR Helen Gill 
For me, the power of social media as a PR tool is the power to publish your own content and start to influence and shape the agenda so that you don’t always have to rely so heavily on media relations any more. That’s why I don’t like the phrase ‘online PR’ or even ‘digital PR’ – it just feels like a way of doing what we’d always done but in a slightly different format.
Monday, July 29, 2013 
There's many a council web site which could do with an overhaul. Especially when a new study by O2 suggests that 43 per cent of residents are frustrated that they can't access local government sites on their mobile or tablet. But fixing them can be easier said than done.
The development of a website takes a while. So while the people at gov.uk were busy creating their new vision of what a website should be like, we were also having very similar thoughts.
Thursday, July 25, 2013 
How do people find things? By searching for it. On the web. So having some knowledge of how to make your things easier to search for is an asset that comms people need. Here's a 
basic guide.
by GUEST EDITOR Sarah Lay
Search is important because so many people do it online. Thirty-five per cent of all UK visits online came from a search engine in January 2012, according to this survey by Hitwise, and the most popular engine of choice is Google (it had an 89% market share in the UK in June 2013). If so many people are using search as a short-cut to what they want online you need to make sure your information is the stuff that gets found.
