If you're not involved in local government, you probably missed the fact it was local elections this week (after all the turnout was only 30%). It's one of the few times in the year that a council has a clear idea of what the website's users probably want. On election day, liverpool.gov.uk got 30% more site visitors. On the Friday, traffic was double a normal day, and 35% of traffic went to the results section of the site.

[caption id="attachment_395" align="aligncenter" width="651" caption="Site traffic for election week compared to an average week."]

On Thursday, I did a non-scientific survey of other council sites, just to see how they were dealing with the day. I wasn't looking for problems, I was just curious. It was quite interesting so I put it into a presentation

The thing that struck me most about this selection, was the number of sites that were just doing what the council felt it _had_ to do, rather than what the residents of the council might _want_ it to do. I do agree, a notice of election is a vital part of the democratic process, but it's not really the best way to list the candidates for an election, is it? And, yes, you have a list of polling stations, but again, you can't just turn up at any polling station, so the information is useless to someone, unless you tell them where **their** polling station is.

On the train home, I also did a mobile version of the non-scientific study. I will let you explore the Google+ images of that one. It really doesn't tell you anything more than that most councils are neglecting ~20% of their site users by not providing a mobile version of their site.