CorpComms Magazine

Westminster Council is well-known for its results-focused strategy. When updating its website, its objective was to increase the number of residents using www.westminster.gov.uk to search for basic information and make it user-friendly. Within one year of the website's overhaul, the number of visits per month rose 19 per cent to 438,692, while 83 per cent of visitors found the site 'very' or 'fairly easy' to use.

Rather than building the site around a series of categories, Westminster structured it around the search engine, map and calendar. For example, research showed that residents were most interested in transactional material such as paying parking tickets or library fines, so a link to that function is now at the top of the home page, alongside four other tabs - 'services', 'map', 'apply' and 'tell us'. Services by category have been moved to the bottom, while popular tasks, such as finding local councillors or ordering recycling bags, are easy to find on the home page.

The judges described the site as 'easy to navigate' and scored the website highly on its 'unique localised idea', a MyWestminster function which allows residents to receive information specific to their needs. More than 46,000 people received a MyWestminster enewsletter in April 2011, up 8,000 on March 2010.

Social media, such as a Twitter feed, Facebook page and blog, have been incorporated. Every month Westminster receives 'was this useful?' feedback reports from users, which shape ongoing improvements, and old or infrequently used pages are regularly deleted.

The changes have led to an increase in the time people spend on the site from 2.23 minutes to 3.47 minutes, and 51 per cent of residents say they have visited the site in the past six months. When the same question was posed in May 2007 the response was 23 per cent, and 35 per cent in June 2009.

'This website does a simple job well,' said one judge. 'It has created a clever way of delivering information and achieved impressive results.'

Shortlisted entries:

BBC TV Licensing - Agencies: Fishburn Hedges, TH_NK

'www.climateweek.com, Website design, build and launch' - Climate Week - Agency: Strange

'www.coca-cola.co.uk' - Coca-Cola - Agency: Zone

'www.quercusbooks.co.uk' - Quercus - Agency: Knifedge

'www.rb.com, RB corporate website' - Reckitt Benckiser - Agency: The Workroom