Darwin City Council’s website recently scored the highest rating in a website usability study of Australia’s capital city council websites.
In this independent study 600 random participants, 100 participants for each website, were asked to complete some simple tasks to test website usability.
Darwin City Council had the best score, with 74 percent. Perth and Adelaide Council had the lowest scores with 54 percent and 58 percent respectively.
There was little difference between the remaining three websites with only seven percent margin separating them.
The test involved six leading council websites – Adelaide, Hobart, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin.
The sites were run through website usability and user experience testing tool Loop11. Loop11 is an online user experience testing tool, allowing individuals and companies to conduct remote and unmoderated usability tests on any website.
One of the main systems tested was task completion rates, focussing on waste collection dates and times.
If the participants found the appropriate page they were deemed to have completed the task successfully, otherwise they were considered to have failed it,
or they may have abandoned the task if it became to hard.
The results showed that finding this information was often difficult, with only Melbourne and Perth City Council’s scoring over 50 percent.
The test also measured the average time taken to complete a task.
Results varied greatly from Darwin City Council, which averaged 110 seconds, to Hobart City Council which averaged 176 seconds.
After completing the test, participants were asked to grade the websites for ease of use. This involved participants ranking the websites on a 1 to 5 point system.
All councils scored between 70 and 80 per cent on this test.
More information about the test can be found at www.loop11.com
