1 "Quality requirements for web-sites – recommendations for best practice for fulfilling user needs Best practice in communicating statistics: Making statistics meaningful for users Celia Santos Sánchez Unit D4 – Dissemination Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

2 Quality requirements for web-sites Principle 1: Have general guidelines for organisation Principle 2: Provide rich set of content, free access to data with consistent tools across all domains Principle 3: Make data reusable Principle 4: Track usage, user behaviour, user feedback

3 Thursday 8 Septem3ber 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination Principle 1 Important to have general guidelines for organisation

4 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 1. Quality requirements: general EU guidelines Information Providers guide/The internet handbook Information Providers guide/The internet handbook

5 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 1. Eurostat guidelines

6 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination Principle 2 Provide rich set of content, free access to data with consistent tools across all domains

7 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 2. Rich set of content Statistical content All section follows the Content providers guide to ensure harmonization and coherence between the sections Multilingualism: EN, FR, DE Writing for the web: big exercise to re-do all the introduction pages in web style

8 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 2. Eurostat: rich set of contentEurostat

9 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 2. Eurostat: content: sections harmonisedEurostat All sections have the same look& feel the user finds always the content structured in the same way…helping navigation

10 2. Free access to data (free dissemination policy) Started 1st October 2004 All statistical Data and electronic publications are FREE OF CHARGE via the Eurostat website Available in three languages – (en,de,fr) > datasets online available > tables online available > publication available (.pdf) Data updated twice a day Among top 5 visited websites of European Commission Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

11 2. Consistent tools across all domains Navigation tree –Data Explorer (dataset interface) –Tables Graphs and Maps interface Country profiles Business Cycle Clock Bulk download facility Statistics Explained Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

12 2. Consistent tools across all domains navigation treenavigation tree Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

13 2. Consistent tools across all domains: other visualisation tools Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination Business Cycle Clock (BCC) for economic cycle analysisBusiness Cycle Clock Country and regional profiles for comparisonsCountry and regional profiles for comparisons

14 2. Consistent tools across all domains: Statistics ExplainedStatistics Explained Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

15 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination Principle 3 Make data reusable

16 3. Making data re-usable Users needs cannot be predetermined Allow users to re-use data with tools they prefer Provide various data formats in visualisation tools (xls, html, txt, xml, spss, pc-axis) Bulk download facility – raw datasets (tsv, sdmx-ml, dft) Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

17 3. Making data re-usable : Bulk download facility Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

18 Principle 4 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination Track usage user behaviour user feedback

19 4. Track usage: monitoring figures – May million page views 886,000 dataset extractions 675,000 tables consultations 510,00 publication downloads (.pdf) 1,2 million datasets downloaded via bulkdownload Internal Commission usage less 3% Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

20 4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 1.Comparison between Eurostat Website and other IO websites of similar nature OECD website IMF website – section Data and Statistics UN website – section Publication, Stamps, Databases INE website 1. Analyse the quality of content 2. Produce recommendations

21 4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination First impression It is clear who and what the site is for Overall impression 7,8/10 Best rating Usability 3,5/5 Best rating (vs 2,5/5 in 2007) but: not always clear what to do next, position in the website Functionalities Complete but should enhance search and result page Can enhance assess to data (appreciated service) Technical issues 2nd place – need to improve accessibility

22 4. User feedback: support helpdesks Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination

23 Future developments Inflation Dashboard (ECB) Mobile Devices