Paul Canning – challenged by Tom Watson to do so – has come up with ten things that need to be looked at as part of the government’s web strategy. His number one issue is ‘findability’:
Search is the prime route to content and is followed by links from other websites. How government addresses this is through newspaper ads – see DirectGov – or, slowly, very limited textads and rare banner ads. I’m not aware of any strategy which looks at how people find services or information in the real world online. Most pages are not optimised for search, most top results are by fluke rather than design and most links by legacy. All of that is and will continue to end – there is competition online. If they can’t find you, what’s the point?
I think it’s yes ‘web strategy’ but a bit wider than that. Think ‘service delivery strategy’ or ‘engagement strategy’ … All of these depend on ‘findability’ or, as I kindof bluntly put it, what’s the point? There is why great stuff which constantly doesn’t find an audience. Why?
Incidentally the other nine are important too, if anything’s ever going to change:
2. Disengagement from the wider web and those damned walled gardens
3. Engaging the industry
4. Marketing
5. Widgetising services
6. Engaging the local
7. Cheaper usability methods
8. Content
9. Fixations on ‘engagement’
10. Utilising reputation