FREEDyourMind

Social Media Best Practices for Government

The federal government doesn’t have the same flexibility with implementing social media plans as the private sector. The feds have to deal with archaic public comment laws, bureaucratic approval processes for messaging, and smaller budgets.

However, despite all that red tape, our researchshows that all 15 cabinet-level departments have some presence on the 3 big social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube).

We've been releasing the ACSI E-Government Satisfaction Index since 2003. We're trying to shake things up a bit, and while we still plan to release quarterly updates on citizen satisfaction and citizen ratings of transparency, we're trying to supplement that data with other topics of interest to those who are working in e-government, whether at the federal, state, or local level.

So this quarter, two of our usability auditors (thank you Kamaria Campbell and Kathy Totz) did an exhaustive study of what the 15 cabinet-level departments are doing in terms of social media in order to make suggestions and recommendations to other government departments, agencies, and programs. You can download the full report for free on our website.

In addition to the social media best practices, the report also includes satisfaction scores for 100 federal government agencies and our quarterly Transparency Index, which provides a quantitative measurement of how transparent an agency is perceived by citizens. Rhonda Berg does a great job with the satisfaction and transparency data every quarter.

Here are some highlights of the report:

• All 15 executive departments are participating in the three most popular social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube).
• Almost half of the 15 departments have more than one presence on a single social media platform.
• Organizations that have a number of presences on one or more social platforms should create an aggregate social media page that lists all of the options with which citizens can interact with them via social media.
• Citizen satisfaction, at 75 on the study’s 100-point scale or higher since late 2009 (with only one exception in the second quarter of 2010, when satisfaction fell briefly to 74.7), shows no sign of waning and maintains an aggregate score of 75.5 in the third quarter of 2011. 
• The aggregate Q3 2011 online transparency score is 77.3, which has increased from last quarter and is the highest aggregate transparency score measured so far.

What's missing from our list of best practices for government social media activities? Any thoughts? We'd love to hear them. I'd also like to hear it if you have ideas for other topics we can include in future ACSI E-Gov Satisfaction Index reports.  

Recommendations for the .Gov Task Force

This spring, President Obama signed Executive Order 13571, “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service,”  which requires federal agencies to strengthen customer service, specifically the manner in which they deliver services and information via the web.

As part of the president's Campaign to Cut Waste, the effort is designed to eliminate or consolidate redundant websites and improve websites that are outdated, difficult to use, or poorly maintained. The desired outcome? Taxpayer money will be saved AND citizens will have an easier access to the content they need.

The .gov Task Force, which was formed in July 2011, now has the difficult task of paring down at least 25% of the more than 24,000 federal government websites in existence today. While the task force is planning to seek qualitative feedback from the public on which sites to cut, it has yet to establish criteria on which it will base its final decision. It is important for the task force to base its decision on the right mix of quantified data (both behavioral and attitudinal) in order to make uniform decisions across the board.

As the government begins the arduous and important decisions of deciding which websites are eliminated and which are consolidated, three critical components must be in play:

• The volume of traffic on the website and other critical behavioral metrics
• Information redundancy
• The website's value to the citizens who regularly use it.

Web traffic alone isn’t enough to justify to cutting a website because that site may contain valuable, highly targeted content that isn’t available anywhere else. Considering whether the site duplicates content is another important consideration, but determining overlaps will be long and arduous with 24,000 sites, or even just with the roughly 1700 federal domains. Therefore, an assessment of the quality and value of the specific sites to citizens is a critical component to determining whether a site is necessary.

Right now, more than 230 federal websites work with us to measure, monitor, and improve citizen satisfaction, and the ACSI methodology that we use to power our technology has been the standard metric for e-gov sites since 2003. We've collected more than 7 million surveys from visitors to federal websites since 2001, including more than 4 million since President Obama’s 2009 inauguration. There is data available on many sites that could guide these kinds of decisions, and certainly any or all of the 1700 .gov domains or the 24,000 federal websites in existence today could be measuring the citizen experience as one mark of success.

We released the second quarter ACSI E-Government Satisfaction and Transparency Index yesterday, with satisfaction scores for more than 100 federal websites and transparency scores for more than 30 websites. You can get it on our website for free and see that there is a compelling case to be made that not only can federal websites be an efficient, cost-effective means of the government meeting its citizenry's needs, but that the means to evaluate, consolidate and improve them are already available. We're also hosting a free webinar to look into the ACSI E-Gov Index Q2 results in more depth... we'd love to have you join us and ask any questions that you may have.

In the meantime, are there other criteria you think the .gov task force should be using to consolidate and pare down websites? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

ACSI Results: Google & Fox Rule, Facebook and HuffPo Flop

Today is the release of the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business report, which includes measures for social media websites, portals, and search engines. You can download ForeSee's commentary about the scores on our website.

Here's a quick infographic you can use with winners and losers; all scores are listed at the end of the post.

 

Social Media

Let's talk about social media first. Facebook's customer satisfaction score was up a bit, but still very low (66 on the ACSI's 100-point scale). This should be really scaring Facebook right now with the advent of Google+. Studies show that customer satisfaction (as measured by the ACSI) predicts sales, loyalty, and recommendations. If Facebook was sitting pretty with a customer satisfaction score of 80 or higher, I think it would be almost impossible for Google+ to break through that. It's hard to switch a social network--you have to reconnect with everyone, post new pictures, figure out a new interface... if everyone was happy with Facebook, there would be no reason to do it. But a score of 66 is just plain bad...which leaves the door wide open for Google+ to waltz through and steal market share from Facebook.

The other big news in the social space is that MySpace.com dropped out of the Index this year because we couldn't even get enough surveys to get a statistically significant sample, underscoring the widespread talk of MySpace's declining market share.

Search and Portals

I feel good about Google's chance to come in and possibly even own the social space with Google+, but in portals and search, Bing is making some serious inroads. I said before that if you are satisfying customers, you don't need to worry about people leaving, and that's true. Google search has a customer satisfaction score of 83, an excellent ACSI score by any standard. But Bing made huge improvements this year, and jumped from 77 to 82, just one point behind Google. Bing has built-in market share because it is the search engine on all Microsoft properties and partner properties. And while people are unlikely to go looking for a competitor if Google is meeting their needs (which it appears to be doing), they will undoubtedly run in to Bing and it seems to be basically as good after just a year in the market.

Online News

Foxnews.com has only been in the Index for two years and has topped the news category--by a lot--both years. This year we added HuffingtonPost.com for the first time, and it came in at the very bottom of the ACSI with a score of 69, the second-lowest score in the e-business category, behind only Facebook. When asked what people liked and didn't like about the site, the most frequent complaint was related to layout and navigation.

What's interesting to me is that in the news category, you have two sites that are basically designed for and frequented by "true believers" and they are at the top and bottom of the Index, although you could definitely argue that MSNBC.com is intentionally trying to be the anti-Fox for the left, and they are right in the middle. These news outlets and websites are clearly meeting user needs and expectations with a pretty wide variety of success. 

Here are all the scores reported today, and you can get much more complete analysis here.

 
We have a lot more data we haven't shared yet--the truth is that the turnaround time is pretty tight and so we analyze the basic ACSI numbers first and then go back and look at some of the other data we collected. Eric Feinberg, a director at ForeSee who has a ton of experience and knowledge about content, media, and entertainment sites like these will be guest blogging in the coming weeks about some of the other findings. We have some interesting data on how customers perceive ads that I'm looking forward to digging into a bit more.

Customer Satisfaction and Purchase Intent

Tomorrow we're releasing our annual Top 100 E-Retail Satisfaction Index. In advance of the release, I just want to share a little bit about why this is such an important annual report for the industry and why satisfaction matters so much for retailers.

I think almost everyone buys into the concept of tracking and improving customer satisfaction. Most companies have some way to survey customers and will at least give lip service, if not actual service, to the concept that they want to satisfy their customers. But not everyone understands that customer satisfaction is not just a fluffy, feel-good concept. It is measurable and quantifiable.

I could talk about this forever, but I want to keep it simple. The ACSI methodology (developed at the University of Michigan, still in use as a leading national economic indicator that is released monthly) predicts future financial success. Seventeen years of academic research at the University of Michigan and other universities around the world proves that a more satisfied customer is more likely to return, recommend, buy again, and buy more. Companies with higher satisfaction even have higher stock prices. These are facts that are not in dispute.

So, if e-retailers want to manage their business with a metric that will predict the future success of their business, a scientific measure of customer satisfaction is the obvious choice. And that is why it really matters who does well and who doesn't do well on customer satisfaction indices, and why so many financial analysts ask us to lead conference calls reviewing the results of our index each year.

With that, stay tuned for results!

Transparency 2010: A year in review

We at ForeSee Results recently released our latest e-gov report, focused on transparency and open government.  Transparency and Open Government has been one of the buzz-phrases of President Barack Obama’s White House since the new administration took office two years ago.  This effort was a very ambitious and sweeping objective to transform government departments and agencies into entities that reflect the democratic ideals of openness, democratic participation, and collaboration.  Two years after the initial memo published by President Obama and his administration many are wondering if the goal has taken root and, if so, how successful it has been. In the meantime, political power has changed hands, we’re in the middle of a contentious budget season, and the focus both now and in the future on transparency as a government-wide priority is uncertain.

This is the fifth quarter in a row that we have published such a report and this report gives us the opportunity to look back over 2010 and assess a full year of transparency. In the first quarter of 2010, 23 federal sites participated in the E-Government Transparency Index. By the end of 2010, participation had increased 35%, bringing the total number of participating websites to 32.

Online Transparency scores have been improving for the past two quarters, after a drop in the second quarter of  2010. 

After some extensive research, ForeSee Results developed the E-Government Transparency Index in 2009. The goal was twofold: 

• To create an accurate, actionable and precise measurement of citizens’ opinions on government transparency 
• To quantify the relationships among online transparency, citizen satisfaction, trust, and the likelihood to participate and collaborate with government agencies

The ForeSee Results E-Government Transparency Index has grown into a vital tool for measuring the success, failure, or progress of government departments and agencies online, providing a clear direction for improvement, and forming a benchmark from which all other non-participating entities can draw instruction and inspiration. After all, you cannot manage what you do not measure.

Using a standard methodology that has been in use in government since 1999 (the American Customer Satisfaction Index), the E-Government Transparency Index measures online transparency according to citizen perceptions. How easy is the information to find? How quickly is it made available? How thorough is it? In a democracy, citizen perceptions define reality, and transparency’s success or failure should be first and foremost defined by citizen opinions.

 

Some groups have done exceptionally well.  We use a score of 80 (on a scale of o to 100) as a threshold for a top performer.  The top performers are listed below.

 

There have been others in and around government that attempt to define transparency based on the amount of data that is put in the public domain.  I disagree.  The best measurement of transparency has to be from the citizen's perception. The information needs to be timely, thorough and available to citizens.  Ultimately they are the judge as to whether or not government is transparent.

You can get the full report here.

 

 

Amazon in UK tops in satisfying their customers

 
At ForeSee Results we just released our 4th annual UK E-Retail Satisfaction Index, measuring the top 40 UK retailers.  We surveyed nearly 10,000 UK consumers that visited the most successful UK e-retailers during the holiday season. 

Some of the key findings

• After a huge year-on-year increase in online customer satisfaction from 2008 to 2009 (from 67 to 71 on the study’s 100-point scale), satisfaction with the top 40 UK e-retailers not only held onto the gains achieved last year but increased another point in 2010 to 72.

 

• There is a notable 23-point gap between the highest-scoring e-retailer (Amazon.com, 84) and the lowest (RyanAir, 61). In the analysis we see that the largest retailers have the highest satisfaction. In fact, the average satisfaction of the top 10 e-retailers (in terms of traffic) is 77; while the average satisfaction for the rest is a 71, a gap of six points.  The best are getting better, while the rest are falling behind. The good news for the smaller players is that customer experience is something that can be improved. Smaller retailers can easily level the playing field and compete with larger retailers if they focus on improving the things that matter the most to their customers.  
• Amazon held the top two spots.  Yes, you heard me right.  Amazon.com scored 84, followed by Amazon.co.uk at 83.  The only other e-retailer that scored above 80 was Play.com at 81.  Over the years 80 has become the bar for top performing sites to be measured against.  John Lewis and Marks & Spencer round out the top 5 with scores of 78.   

 

Why do we care about satisfying our customers?  In today's economy satisfying your customers is more important than ever.  Consumes will go where they are satisfied.  The competition is high and the switching costs for consumers is low.  And the data validates this.  A highly satisfied shopper in the UK says they are 56% more likely to purchase from the retailer the next time they are looking for similar merchandise (a great measurement of loyalty) and 69% more likely to recommend the e-retailer to others. 

 

You can get the full report here.

Next week the US E-Retail Satisfaction Index will be releasead.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fox Rocks the Socks Off of...Just About Everybody

by Eric Feinberg

The release of the American Customer Satisfaction Index on Tuesday was dominated by one finding: people don’t like Facebook. It was covered by virtually every news outlet you can think of, from national newspapers to magazines to television to radio to blogs…it was everywhere.

But the ACSI report didn’t measure only social media sites. It also covered news websites like ABCNews.com, CNN.com, FOXNews.com, MSNBC.com, NYTimes.com, and USAToday.com. The Facebook story was pretty interesting, so I think maybe people didn’t see the big news in news:

FoxNews.com beat the pants off all the other news sites, in almost every imaginable way. 

It was FOXNews.com’s first year being measured in the Index. They got an 82 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, the highest score any news site has ever received in nine years of measurement by the ACSI. This is huge, right? Especially considering all the grief FOXNews often gets about the slant on their reporting.

Not only did FOXNews.com get the highest ACSI score that any news organization has ever received, it killed the other cable news networks: MSNBC.com got a 74 and CNN.com got a 73 (eight and nine points behind FOXNews.com, respectively). It also killed ABCNews.com, which got a 75. And though FOXNews.com beat out print by a slightly smaller margin, it still killed the print websites that were measured: USAToday.com (77) and NYTimes.com (76). 

Here’s the real kicker: each and every one of those websites improved satisfaction since last year: ABCNews.com has increased almost 6% since last year. And FOX still left everybody in the dust.

 
What other news sites do you want us to measure? Next year, we’re considering HuffingtonPost.com (which actually has more visitors than FOXNews, according to EBizMBA.com). Thoughts? Please post in the comments.

Okay, so now that I have breathlessly heralded the total domination of FOXNews.com in the news and information category, why did it happen? 

• We survey only site users. Before anyone takes a survey, we ask them which news sites they have been to in the last three months. Then they get a survey about that news site. The result is an accurate assessment of customer satisfaction. FOXNews’ survey results reflect how their own users feel about FOXNews.com; MSNBC.com’s survey results reflect how their own users feel about MSNBC.com. Customer satisfaction scores are always a bit higher than general population satisfaction scores about any given website, because they have to have a decent level of satisfaction about the site if they’re already going there. If they hated it, they wouldn’t be going there. Imagine if we surveyed FOXNews.com readers about MSNBC.com and vice versa. The results would have been quite different. In real estate, it’s all about location; in web analytics, it’s all about segmentation. When reliably measuring satisfaction for our clients on a continuous basis, we purposefully take the aggregate insights and then segment them down to the nth segment (by visitor frequency, gender, age, intent, success, and more) so that we can bring clarity to varying satisfaction levels across differing audiences

• FOXNews users spend most of their time with FOXNews: More than two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents (site users) see FOXNews as their primary news source while FOX’s ideological counterpart, MSNBC.com, serves as the primary news source for less than half (49%) of its website visitors, online or offline. The site whose audience was least likely to consider it their primary news source, however, was USAToday.com (39%). Further, FOXNews.com visitors tend to rely solely on FoxNews for all of their news and information (inclusive of the FOXNews TV brand) whereas visitors to other sites tend to seek out multiple sources for news and information. For example, more than half (52%) of FOXNews.com users frequent fewer than two news websites on a regular basis. Compare that with NYTimes.com: only one in three NYTimes.com users looks at two news websites or less on a regular basis.

• FoxNews.com visitors may have lower site expectations: The simple definition of satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect. FoxNews.com visitors’ expectation levels are calibrated by the fact that they visit fewer sites than do other survey respondents. Since they visit fewer sites and thus have less experience with other news and information sites, they could have different and potentially lower expectations. The research also shows that FoxNews.com readers are slightly older, on average, and have lower income and education levels, all of which often correlate with lower expectations, according to our research.

• FoxNews has brand alignment: FoxNews.com seems to have successfully translated the personality of its on-air brand to its website. “Great brands and products must evoke a dynamic personality in order to attract passionate customers,” said Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality not included. I would add to Rohit’s quote “…in any channel at any time.” Whether you agree with the FoxNews worldview or not, it is undeniable that when expectations align with experience, that’s a winning – and satisfying - combination. Think about your business. A tough task for any website, network, company or person is to deliver on your core and key brand attributes in all channels. FoxNews has managed to introduce its corporate personality to its audience in each channel well.

Other thoughts and findings impacting our industry: 

• The 50/50 ad spend screen shifting theory: This study is starting to prove out my long-held belief about TV’s continuing, but loosening, grip on web traffic. We ask the question, “What medium do you prefer most for keeping up with news?” When you tally up personal computer, mobile and tablet access, that total ranges from 22% to 44% (FoxNews.com and CNN.com, respectively). Once that preference shifts to 50% or more across the board, we’ll see the long-awaiting flood of media mix changes that lead to significant online investment away from TV. Our decisions, our lives, our time will be invested more online than on TV and thus we’ll see the ad dollars follow. Follow the money is what they do on Wall Street. Follow the consumer is what they do with ad spend.

 

• Advertising engagement: There is a relationship between visit frequency and likelihood to look at ads on news sites. USAToday.com and ABCNews.com frequent visitors both being more likely to look at ads than CNN frequent visitors. The relationship between visit frequency and ignoring (not paying attention to) ads is less clear. For most of the sites, visit frequency tends to increase the likelihood of clicking on ads. ABCNews.com appears to be better than many of the other sites at generating clicks among visitors who come to the site weekly or more often. For most sites, there is a relationship between visit frequency and ad relevance. This is not the case for CNN, though. Ad relevance is not impacted by visitor frequency. In general, infrequent news site visitors are more likely to perceive ads as interfering their experience than are more frequent visitors.

• Paywalls: NYTimes.com users are most willing to consider paying for content on the site (9% of users would consider paying for content on that site) while only 2% of MSNBC.com users would consider it. Consideration is by no means activation, so let’s keep a close eye on The Times of London and others considering paywalls.

Bottom line: While it’s interesting to talk about the high satisfaction and what caused it, regardless of the cause, FOXNews is sitting on paydirt. Academic studies have shown that high satisfaction as measured by the ACSI leads to more loyalty, recommendations, repeat visits, and more. These kinds of actions translate to dollars for advertisers. After all, as an advertiser, would you rather spend your money on a website with viewers that are loyal, happy, recommenders? It’s great for your brand. 

There’s a whole lot more in the report and in my head. Download the full report at our website and post your comments and feedback below (I’ll respond, I promise). What else did I miss? Why do you think FOX dominated so much, and what does it mean for news and for advertisers? Who should we add to the study next year? Email me anytime to talk more about the content, media and entertainment worlds. Thank you. Be well.

Eric Feinberg is Industry Director for content, media, and entertainment at ForeSee Results. He’s on Twitter at @ericfeinberg and can be reached by email at eric.feinberg@foreseeresults.com. 

The Best and Worst of Facebook

As a follow up to the post I just put up with the latest #ACSI results, Lora Kolodony at TechCrunch gave us the idea to do a word cloud for some of the questions we asked in the survey.

We did some research that was complementary to the ACSI, and we asked people: what do you like best and least about Facebook (and the other companies as well). Here are the results:

What do you like MOST about Facebook? (Grab the Wordle here if you want to use it)

 

What do you like LEAST about Facebook? Grab the Wordle here

What's interesting is that people said "nothing" a lot when asked what they like best and least about Facebook. You can see that what people like best is really the connection. Almost all the words have to do with connection. When it comes to what people like least, the answers are more varied, but the most popular have to do with privacy, functionality, the newsfeed, advertising, navigation, and security.

What do YOU like best and worst about Facebook or any of the other social sites we measured?

Facebook Flops, Google Drops, FoxNews Mops Up the Floor with CNN

So you may have seen by now that the big #ACSI report on e-business was released today (hyperlink to http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-report-2010.shtml) with a bang.

We've been doing the analysis for the ACSI since 2002, and there is usually pretty big news in one of the measured e-business categories, but this year, there's a shakeup in all three.

First thing's first: social media. This is the first year the ACSI has measured social media, and what a debut. With an average score of 70, social media has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of online industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia leads the social media industry with a score of 77, and YouTube comes in at 73. Industry darling Facebook registers a score of 64, only one point above MySpace (63). Facebook and MySpace have scores so low, the only other companies measured by the ACSI with such low scores are airlines and cable companies. Facebook seems to be suffering from concerns about privacy, frequent changes to the interface, and advertising.

	2010
Social Media Aggregate	70
Wikipedia.com	77
YouTube.com (Google Inc.)	73
All Others	72
Facebook.com	64
MySpace.com (News Corp.)	63

As for News and Information Sites, the big news in this industry is the debut of FoxNews.com at the top of the heap with a score of 82, which is five points above nearest competitor USAToday.com (77) and well ahead of other cable news providers MSNBC (74) and  CNN.com (73). NYTimes comes in at 76. FoxNews registers the highest score ever received by any news organization in the ACSI.Our data shows the high score could be in part because their viewers are very loyal and don't follow as many different news sources as users to the other measured outlets. Therefore, their expectations may be a little lower, which makes them easier to satisfy. But whatever the reason for their high satisfaction, it is off the charts for a news site.  If I were Fox, I’d be using this data in my media kit, because high satisfaction leads to high return visits and loyalty, which means more eyeballs for ads on FoxNews.com.

The Portals and Search Enginescategory is usually a pretty stable in terms of who dominates the field: Google has been at the top every year but this year and in 2007 (when Yahoo slipped momentarily ahead). This year, the "all others" group beats Google, which is a combination of all the other search engines not mentioned by name in this study. This year, they tended to be niche search engines. Google itself had a 7% decline this year (down six points to 80). Bing was measured for the first time this year, and it made a strong first showing with a score of 77, second only to Google.

So what do you think:

• Can Bing actually compete with Google, even with all the power of Microsoft? Last year I would have said no; this year I think Bing might actually have a glimmer of hope.

• Does Facebook's low satisfaction score pose any danger for the company? Or like other perennially low scoring companies like airlines and cable companies, does it have enough of a specialized market that it can dominate despite low satisfaction?

• Why can't the other cable news channels come close to FoxNews.com's high satisfaction score?

I'd love to hear what you think in the comments...

You can download the free report here: http://www.foreseeresults.com/research-white-papers/ACSI-e-business-report-2010.shtmlor catch me on Twitter (@larryfreed) with any questions about the findings.

Citizen Satisfaction with e-Gov Stays Strong

Strong Satisfaction Scores Continue

Across over 100 Federal Government websites and over 330,000 visitor surveys, satisfaction with Federal Government websites registered a score of 75.1 on a scale of 0-100. While this is slightly off last quarters score of 75.2 (an all-time high), this is not a significant difference.  The fact that citizen satisfaction stayed strong is very good news.

Why does it matter if citizens are satisfied with Federal Government websites?  Is there competition?  If you have a bad experience with the IRS.gov are you going to pay your taxes in Canada?  No.  The traditional way we look at competition doesn't apply to Federal Government websites.  Yet, citizen satisfaction is very important for many reasons.

Channel Competition

One of the main reasons satisfaction with Federal Government websites is important is that the web is one of many channels that citizens can use to get information from the government, perform transactions with the government and communicate with the government.  It is also one of the most efficient ways to accomplish those tasks.  To service the next 10,000 citizens who need information on the Swine Flu from CDC, want to apply for Social Security benefits, get information on Medicare Prescription Drug plans, check out the latest happenings at NASA, investigate our National Parks or do research on a medical condition at Medlineplus, the web provides the most cost effective and efficient way to do so.  Think about trying to accomplish those tasks in a call center or a branch office -- expensive and inefficient.  Citizens will use the channel that provides them the best experience.  So the web is competing with the other channels, we call that Channel Competition.  And the reward for winning the competition?  Lower cost to provide information and services.  A true win-win.  Citizens get more information and services that is more accessible.  And Government is able to provide that information and services at a lower cost.  Which is not only a win for Government but also for us taxpayers.  I guess that makes it a win-win-win.

Highlights

Some highlights from the results include strong scores from many agency websites.  Social Security had two sites that score a 90 on a scale of 0 to 100, the Retirement Estimator (www.ssa.gov/estimator) and Social Security iClaim (www.socialsecruity.gov/applyonline) sites.  These scores are incredible.  To put it in perspective, Amazon and Google scored 86 the last time their ACSI scores were published.  Is Social Security site better than Amazon and Google?  And by better we mean, more functions, better look and feel, more usable, better site performance, etc.  Most experts and everyday citizens would not claim that the Social Security sites are "better" than Amazon and Google, but compared to their expectations they are.  The simple definition of satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect.

In total, 27% of the sites measured scored 80 or higher.  80 is considered the threshold for a top performing site.  Now these sites can not rest on their past success.  As a result of their strong performance and the strong performance of many private sector sites, the standard that visitors will hold these sites to will continue to increase.  And for those sites that were not in the top echelon, they are taking the all important first step to improvement, which is measuring where you are today.  You cannot manage what you do not measure.  

The Satisfied Citizen

We define the satisfied citizen as those citizens who had a satisfaction score of 80 or higher for the e-Gov site they were visiting.  The dissatisfied citizen had a satisfaction of 69 or below.  The impact of satisfying citizens is huge.  The satisfied citizen is 80% more likely to use the the site as a primary resource, 79% more likely to recommend the site to others and 52% more likely to return to the site when compared to a dissatisfied citizen.  The satisfied citizen is also 50% more likely to participate in government and 54% more likely to trust government.

The Full Report

You can find all the details of the report by downloading our commentary on the results or email me and I will send you a copy.