A national survey has ranked Merton Council’s website in the top four in London and in the top 20 in the UK, as well as joint first place in the UK for users with disabilities.
A total of 433 UK councils had their websites reviewed by Socitm, the organisation representing IT professionals working in councils. The survey, called “Better Connected 2012”, looks at the everyday tasks customers commonly do online, such as paying council tax, to see how user-friendly the site is.
Reviewers praised Merton’s site as “an easy user experience”, highlighting its “straightforward, fast routes” and referred to it as “definitely a site for others to learn from”.
Cabinet member for performance and implementation, Councillor Mark Betteridge, said: “It’s really rewarding to know that Merton residents can find the information they want on our website quickly and easily – from renewing library books and finding out school term dates to checking where their nearest swimming pool is. We were also very pleased to see that the accessibility test done by the charity RNIB put our website in joint first place in the country.
“Our success is due to knowing what our residents want: an organised website that provides an effective customer experience and saves time.
“We receive 200 online surveys from our customers every month to ensure our site is constantly being improved – and it is great to see this work is clearly paying off.”
Notes to editors:
“Better Connected 2012” is the 14th annual survey of all local authority websites. It aims to identify good practice in the development of these websites using extensive evidence-based research. Reviewers carried out a structured survey with 210 questions for local authority websites, followed by four shorter surveys on specific topics. For more information please visit: http://www.socitm.net/betterconnected
For more information on Merton council’s website, please visit: http://www.merton.gov.uk
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Press Contact:
Nina Romain
Communications Officer
London Borough of Merton
020 8545 4654