Quality requirements for websites recommendations for best practice
"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 D 4 – Dissemination celia. santos-sanchez@ec. europa. eu Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 1
Quality requirements for web-sites n Principle 1: Have general guidelines for organisation n Principle 2: Provide rich set of content, free access to data with consistent tools across all domains n Principle 3: Make data reusable n Principle 4: Track usage, user behaviour, user feedback 2
Principle 1 Important to have general guidelines for organisation Thursday 8 Septem 3 ber 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 3
1. Quality requirements: general EU guidelines Information Providers guide/The internet handbook Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 4
1. Eurostat guidelines Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 5
Principle 2 Provide • rich set of content, • free access to data • with consistent tools across all domains Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 6
2. Rich set of content Statistical content n All section follows the “Content providers guide” to ensure harmonization and coherence between the sections n Multilingualism: EN, FR, DE n Writing for the web: big exercise to re-do all the introduction pages in web style Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 7
2. Eurostat: rich set of content Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 8
2. Eurostat: content: sections harmonised All sections have the same look& feel the user finds always the content structured in the same way…helping navigation Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 9
2. Free access to data (free dissemination policy) n Started 1 st October 2004 n All statistical Data and electronic publications are FREE OF CHARGE via the Eurostat website n Available in three languages – (en, de, fr) n > 4. 500 datasets online available n > 1. 200 tables online available n > 6. 000 publication available (. pdf) n Data updated twice a day n Among top 5 visited websites of European Commission Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 10
2. Consistent tools across all domains n Navigation tree – Data Explorer (dataset interface) – Tables Graphs and Maps interface n Country profiles n Business Cycle Clock n Bulk download facility n Statistics Explained 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 Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 12
2. Consistent tools across all domains: other visualisation tools • Business Cycle Clock (BCC) for economic cycle analysis • Country and regional profiles for comparisons Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 13
2. Consistent tools across all domains: Statistics Explained Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 14
Principle 3 Make data reusable Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 15
3. Making data re-usable n Users needs cannot be predetermined n Allow users to re-use data with tools they prefer n Provide various data formats in visualisation tools (xls, html, txt, xml, spss, pc-axis) n 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 16
3. Making data re-usable: Bulk download facility Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 17
Principle 4 Track • usage • user behaviour • user feedback Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 18
4. Track usage: monitoring figures – May 2011 n 4 million page views n 886, 000 dataset extractions n 675, 000 tables consultations n 510, 00 publication downloads (. pdf) n 1, 2 million datasets downloaded via bulkdownload n Internal Commission usage less 3% Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 19
4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010 1. Comparison between Eurostat Website and other IO websites of similar nature OECD website www. oecd. org IMF website – section “Data and Statistics” www. imf. org/external/data. htm UN website – section “Publication, Stamps, Databases” www. un. org/Pubs INE website www. ine. es 1. Analyse the quality of content 2. Produce recommendations Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 20
4. User behaviour: benchmarking 2010 • 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 2 nd place – need to improve accessibility Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 21
4. User feedback: support helpdesks Thursday 8 September 2011 Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities Task Team: Quality and Dissemination 22
Future developments n Inflation Dashboard (ECB) n Mobile Devices 23
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