Direct.gov.uk – site review | Planet Anarky

Direct.gov.uk – site review

My car tax is due, and I received a letter to remind me. How nice. In doing so, it led me to the www.direct.gov.uk site, where I can renew it online.

This shitty task got me thinking: “Why don’t I review this site?”…so here you go! Read on to find out what I thought of the site as a whole. Or is that ‘hole’? I dunno.

First impressions

As a preface to the usual slandering I embark on it’s worth noting that, given the frankly massive amount of information that needs to be made available to the public, this site is going to have its work cut out – particularly in terms of the IA structure, signposting, consistent call-to-action (CTA) messaging and so on. It’s also worth mentioning that, due to the informational nature, I’d expect graphics to be used sparingly.

So: land on the homepage and you’re immediately drawn to the large (and gaudy, but intentionally so) banner graphic that sends the main message of the moment: “Don’t advertise your stuff to thieves”. Eye-catching, and relevant given the time of year. So far, so good for sparing use of graphics.

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It all sits in a grid-based layout (see a PDF here for more on grid layouts), and a rather large number of header links to the main sections of the site. Beneath these there are a selection of ‘teaser’ links that give a flavour of what kind of content to expect. A good start, given the sheer volume of stuff to be conveyed.

All of this is fine, but my initial feeling on getting to the homepage was one of information overload. It’s sending the seasonal security message, but also trying to do its day job of being an information portal. Combined with a left and right navigation columns that seem to hem in the main content, and it leaves me feeling a little claustrophobic.

Additionally, some of the homepage content feels a little unnecessary – like the ‘In the news’ ticker. There’s already a Newsroom link, so why repeat this here?

Mooching around some of the functionality I thought that, as my current location means I’m susceptible to the recent spate of bad weather, I’d try the adverse weather update postcode checker thing…which doesn’t recognise Cardiff postcodes. Not good! Strangely neither does my satnav, for that matter. Conspiracy theorists could conclude that they don’t want you to find (or, if you do, then manage get out of) Cardiff. I think they eat their young here anyway, so let’s move on.

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Site structure

As mentioned earlier, I’d hope that the site is pretty robust in terms of a) getting you where you want to go, and b) keeping you informed of where you are. That means visual cues, use of web convention (breadcrumbs/tree navigation/signposting headlines/etc) and good layout.

…aaaand we’re in luck. Diving deeper into the site reveals a wealth of information that’s clearly laid out: a solid left-navigation menu shows the user where they are and how to get back a level, headlines/page titles are synced, descriptive and useful – and there’s ‘related info’ type boxes in the right-nav that are relevant to the area you’re in.

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Because of the ton of info on this site, we’d expect – hope – that the search function be pretty good. And it is. Searching for either one-word terms (“tax“) or complex phrases (“what vehicle can i drive when i’m 16“) brings back relevant results and gets the user to where they want to be. In the case of one-word terms, they’ve tagged the most popular results with a “Directgov recommends” indicator, which gives the user a decent subtle clue that these results are probably more relevant than others.

That said, I stumbled across this little site – www.directionlessgov.com – who think that the search function is crap. Given I’ve only reviewed the site for an hour or so, I can’t really comment.

Other things

There’s evidence that the government are embracing new technology, in that there’s a link to finding out more about Direct.gov on mobile devices. This is good, but it’s at the bottom of the page. If you’re viewing this site on a mobile browser, wouldn’t it be better to have this link in the header – as that’s what you’d see first?

This is actually irrelevant, as clicking on the link takes you here, where it talks about texting a phrase to a shortcode. It’s not what you’d call revolutionary thinking…but a good attempt. The mobile site itself (m.direct.gov.uk) is ok, but is VERY simple (which I suppose is for the best given the avalanche of data in there).

Accessibility-wise it’s no surprise that being a government site means it’s good. A look at the code underneath shows that it’s all pretty well optimised for screen-readers and the like.

There’s an attempt to cater for kids, too: http://kids.direct.gov.uk … but it’s really not very good. It’d be interesting to find out how much this site is used. Additionally, the non-Flash version is seriously dull: bit unfair for those kids without Flash…or who use a screenreader! This strikes me as making something accessible just to tick the box: the actual utility of the non-flash version is zero, really.

This is the Flash version – and this is the non-Flash. Bleurgh!

Conclusion

A good site overall: it serves it’s purpose, and disseminates the wealth of information pretty well. We all hate car taxes, but this site is – annoyingly – good at what it does. Bloody government!