More Amazing Factoids: US Government Web Sites Best Amazon and Google in User Satisfaction
March 22, 2016
I read “Government Websites Best Amazon, Google in User Satisfaction.” From the write up generated by “real” journalist at a “real” media outfit, I learned:
By one measure, a well-established gauge of user satisfaction, the government actually beats out many of the top business sites on the Web, including perennial consumer favorites Amazon, Expedia and Google.
Where doth the datum originate? Well, the hardly annoying pop up survey outfit ForeSee. According to the write up:
ForeSee evaluates websites on a 100-point customer-satisfaction scale, looking at a variety of factors like search, functionality and ease of navigation. The firm also focuses on outcomes, such as the likelihood that users would return to the site or recommend it to others.
Now for the data:
… 36 percent of the 101 websites ForeSee evaluated in the fourth quarter of 2015 notched scores of 80 or above, what the firm deems as the threshold where websites are “meeting or exceeding the standards of excellence for highly satisfied visitors.” That mark was up from 30 percent in the first quarter of the year. Leading the pack were four websites maintained by the Social Security Administration. Two SSA sites scored 90 on ForeSee’s satisfaction index, and two others scored 89. For comparison, Amazon netted an 86 on the same index. Vanguard.com came in at 80, followed by Google (78), Pinterest (78), Expedia (77) and NYTimes.com (76).
I have added some bold face to make it easier to see the slam dunk the US government Web sites are putting in the face of Team Traffic.
Wow, up from 30% in a matter of months. The Social Security Administration must be doing something right. A couple of questions:
- Does the SSA site support remembering certain passwords for users or do some must have functions lose the state of certain users?
- Has foot traffic at Social Security offices declined because the SSA Web sites are satisfying such a large percentage of users?
- Are the SSA Web sites integrated, or are disparate systems, including mainframes, still generating content for internal reports and public Web queries?
Well, the write up focuses on the lousy job some consumer centric sites are doing with user satisfaction. Are we comparing apples and oranges, or is this just a convenient way to reward some good government clients and remind the most used Web sites that some folks don’t like the modern Web?
No answers, but I am sure some of the university-inspired wizards at ForeSee will have logical, but glib, answers.
By the way, what’s the traffic at the four best Web sites doing in the same time period? My information suggests that traffic to US government Web sites is not booming because the US government Web sites have not made the transitions required to deal with the growing base of users with mobile devices.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
