Whakatane Council wins best website

The win marks another huge victory. File photo.

Whakatane District Council has won Supreme Website Award for the third year running at ALGIM's 2017 Spring Web and Digital and Customer Experience Conference.

The ALGIM Supreme Website Award, sponsored by ReadSpeaker, is based on a web audit carried out by ALGIM each year to encourage development of the digital customer experience in local government.

The audit looks at what self-service functions the website provides, accessibility features, how it complies with best practice for websites, and how quickly councils respond to enquiries through email and social media channels.

ALGIM CEO Mike Manson says the council's win is a huge victory.

'Coming out on top of 78 councils is a tough ask, given the amount of work going into enhancing online services in local government.

'To do it three years in a row is an admirable result, and one that Whakatane District Council should certainly be proud of.

'ALGIM exists to encourage development of digital and ICT services in local government, and this web audit is just another way we do this.

'Keeping your website up-to-date and providing the online services your community wants is a constant job, and New Zealand's local authorities do a great job in meeting the challenge.”

'It's also important that councils are able to meet the accessibility needs of a diverse population, and this forms a big part of this audit. Every member of the community needs to be able to access these services and we want to help councils ensure this happens.”

Whakatane District Council chief executive Marty Grenfell described the award as a 'great achievement”.

'Given the significant investment most councils make in continually improving their online assets, for a small council like ours to be acknowledged as having the country's best local government website, for the third consecutive time, is simply outstanding,” he says.

'That we have dominated the local government website rankings for three years running shows that we have continued to develop and enhance our website, with a primary focus on customer service and making more information available, more easily, for more people.

'Our usage numbers keep going up, our bounce rate - a measure of frustration-related disengagement - is extraordinarily low, and our accessibility for people using mobile devices is best practice. The April emergency event demonstrated graphically how important the last factor is, with website usage quadrupling and more than half of all visitors using mobile devices.”

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1 comment

That is one ugly site

Posted on 19-09-2017 21:19 | By Sg1nz

Would love to know what it was judged on, as it's a terrible looking site, with poor content, ux and features.


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