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When you visit the ARP home page, instead of the website being displayed in full, this pop-up is displayed. You can make out the ARP website in the background, but is it really best practice to ask me to complete a customer satisfaction survey before I’ve even visited the website itself? Of course this used to be a bit of an issue with the Socitm WPS survey but we’ve amended the timing now!

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So, this is the ARP home page. The navigation menu down the lefthand side is good, but what about that intro text in the central panel? Let’s take a closer look for the benefit of people at the back of the room!

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Imagine you have landed on this website, directed to it by one of the four partner councils. Does this introductory text inform me how this website can help me to complete the task I’ve come to the website to undertake? Not at all! This introduction is what I like to refer to as “Aren’t we wonderful?’ content. Some of the words may seem familiar to you – here’s a reminder …

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•  Significant improvements in service delivery •  Annual financial savings in excess of £2m •  Consultancy, training and resilience services for other local

authorities plus the private sector •  Opportunities to enter and win awards and other recognition. •  But what do these statements have to do with a customer wanting to

apply for council ta reduction or find out how to appeal a business rates valuation?

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So, I’ve rubbished the pop-up and then the introductory text on the home page. Am I similarly unimpressed by the remainder of the website? Well, actually no. Indeed quite the reverse. I think this is a REALLY good website for the most part. OK, it’s no perfgect and there are areas where content and user journeys might be enhanced, but overall it’s a site that is straightforward to use and the quality of content is generally very good indeed. As the website of a council shared service I’d happily endorse it as a great site to use as the benchmark to equal or better if you’re setting up a similar resource.

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Here is another example of great content on this shared service website. Careful consideration has clearly been given to the information presentation, and, remembering that this service supports four councils’ revenues and benefits service, I particularly rate the way they have arranged links for downloads for each council partner. This is an excellent way of showing generic and partner-specific information clearly. I suspect (I don’t know) that the inspiration for this style of presentation was Dorset For You, the original local government shared service website.

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So, here’s the equivalent page on Dorset For You, with the council tax leaflets set out by council name. Actually I think Dorset For You’s presentation is better than ARP because they use the individual partner councils’ corporate identity logo, a great way of providing differentiation of content on a large site that represents seven different councils. I commend Dorset For You to any organisation setting up a shared service website: Dorset For You has been around for a number of years now, and the chances are that the many challenges of managing a shared service online have been encountered and addressed at one time or another. There’s at least one person in the room today that knows for a fact that I’ve not been a fan of this site for many of them, but I believe this website has now come of age and is a credit to its web team.

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So, I like the ARP website by and large. Now let’s examine how the partner councils introduce the site and link to it. Obviously because I’m not doing this with a live internet connection I’ve prepped the user journeys and I’ll talk you through them. But when you’re back in the office or if you have a tablet today, I promise you’ll have the same experiences as I’m about to highlight. The question I have for you, though, is ‘Which of the partners hosts the ARP shared service?’ If you already know, please keep this information to yourself for the time being – thanks!

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This is the home page for Breckland District Council in Norfolk. I want to access information about council tax. There are two links on the home page, the one on the left is the main site navigation, the one to its right is a newsflash, a temporary posting. For the purposes of this exercise I’m ignoring the newsflash panel because there is no guarantee that if I visit the site tomorrow the link is going to be present. So, what happens when I click the link for ‘Council Tax and Benefits’?

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From Breckland’s home page link for Council Tax and Benefits I’m taking directly to the home page of the Anglia Revenues Partnership website – except that I’m not, because the dratted pop-up appears first. There was no warning on Breckland’s site that I was being directed to an external website, no introduction that ARP provides Breckland’s council tax service and to top it off I’m presented with a pop-up. Not an auspicious introduction to the Anglia Revenues Partnership, and certainly not a good customer journey for Breckland council tax customers.

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Now, in the interests of balance and fair play, that newsflash that was on Breckland’s home page takes the user to this page on the council’s website. As you can see the page sets out the facilities offered by the Anglia Revenues Partnership and has deep links to the site content. But this is a newsflash, a page that we cannot be certain will be permanently linked to from Breckland’s home page. Or is it simply that the navigation link on their home page errorneously goes to the ARP website. Either way this council needs to pay attention to getting the customer journey just so!

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East Cambridgeshire next. We’ve followed a link on the home page to ‘Council tax’ and this page is displayed. There’s a good service overview, including an explanation of the role and relationship with ARP, and there are onward links to information on the council’s website of related information. East Cambs has a graphic to promote ARP which is clickable. I am clearly encouraged to visit the ARP website to complete my council tax tasks.

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These pages contain East Cambridgeshire specific information then offers me the ARP website as a service alternative.

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Forest Heath do the same as East Cambridgeshire. First up there are links to additional information on the council’s own website and then the ARP relationship is introduced but Forest Heath go one step further than East Cambridgeshire by providing deep links to service descriptions on the ARP website in addition to a home page link.

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Finally, the fourth partner, St Edmundsbury Borough Council. Here’s the top level service landing page for council tax and benefits. This council tells me straight away that ARP administers all aspects of council tax on behalf of the council and there’s a link to ARP’s home page. Further down the page deep links to the range of services available on the ARP website are set out. However, when clicked these links open a new tab – without any advance warning - in my browser. Now notice the left hand navigation menu and we can see there are three sub pages. We’ll select the one for Council Tax.

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This service description page sets out information about council tax in St Edmundsbury. Like East Cambridgeshire and Forest Heath previously there are onward links to St Edmundsbury specific council tax information, plus a link to the ARP website, but this time there are no deep links to ARP content. Further, if you think back to the previous page, apart from the menu navigation link, there were no promoted links to reach this particular page of information on the council website. So, not an entirely satisfactory customer journey on the St Edmundsbury website.

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So, I’ve now shown you the customer journeys to Anglia Revenues Partnership from the four partner councils. Which one, do you think, hosts this shared service?

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