Australia's National Local Government Newspaper Online

Is your Council web site neglected?

by Tim Jessel *

Good web sites ensure residents and ratepayers have access to vital information 24 hours a day and are assisting councils in reducing workloads with less face to face and telephone inquiries. Unfortunately some councils are not taking full advantage of this technology and often fall short in providing an easy to use, up to date service for their users.

Ten ways to annoy your web site users:

• Think that everyone has fast broadband Internet connections.
• Use photographs straight from a digital camera without optimisation.
• Convert everything to PDF.
• Think that we all use Internet Explorer 6 on PCs and that no other browser or platform exists.
• Play the ‘PDF Download Game’ and hide file sizes from your users.
• Convert all text to graphics.
• Stop search engines from finding your web site.
• Create a difficult navigation system.
• Keep updates to a minimum.
• Have as many broken links as possible.

With an ever increasing number of ratepayers looking to the Internet as the first point of contact with their council, how can a stale web site give them confidence in the services you provide?

You are proud of the professionalism you give when residents walk through your Council doors, so the same should be applied when they first visit your web site.

* Tim Jessel runs Melbourne based web design company Newline Development Pty Ltd and has been creating web sites for eight years. For more information please call (03) 9437 8078, email info@newline.com.au or visit www.newline.com.au

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