Web nets millions
Warwickshire County Council’s website has seen a huge surge in the number of visitors clicking onto to its pages.
Last year around eight million people visited http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk, a huge 21 per cent increase on the previous year (*).
The website has seen various improvements in the last couple of years following constant feedback from local people, and now features single click banners, and interactive pages ranging from schools information to street light fault reporting.
And people are clearly delving into the website because in 2007 85 million pages on the website were viewed – up 58 per cent on 2006.
Many people know exactly what they are looking for and delve straight to the page they want via shortcuts and in the last 12 months 78,000 people tapped in http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/libraries, while 60,000 people headed straight to bus timetable information.
The job pages remain the most popular overall with 916,000 visits, followed by the news stories at 496,000 visits, Community Info Database at 393,000 visits, the system listing schools with 295,000 visits and Tourism had 200,000 visits.
When it comes to using the Search box to track down information the most popular searches were:
Jobs
School holidays
Library
Bus
Recycling
Councillors
But there were also some fairly bizarre searches on the site, including:
Pokemon
Christina Aguilera (367 times!!)
Lonely hearts
Venice
Mini waves
Counselling for Toads (this is actually a book, and the county council has copies in Rugby Library)
Eric Britton, Warwickshire County Council’s Head of Communications, said: “I’m delighted that more and more people are discovering the county council website and using it as the valuable tool it is.
“The site is far more interactive than it has ever been, and with the majority of people now having internet access at home or at work, it provides an excellent way of helping people to find the information they want quickly and efficiently.
“The web is part of number of communication channels we offer as a way of making sure the people of Warwickshire have access to the information they want. We are investing in our contact centres, with many more real local people available at the end of the phone, and in our One-Stop-Shops, for those who prefer face to face contact.”