Improvement plan · Step 5 of 7: Track

Page views won't tell you where residents give up. Here's what will.

Three small reports, checked weekly, show whether your fixes are working and where to look next.

Get the plan template All seven steps

The problem

The best films have a twist at the end. Analytics can do the same to you. Big traffic numbers are exciting, but they lead you the wrong way. Thousands of visits tell you nothing about the resident who started a missed bin report, hit a confusing step and rang instead. What you need is the few numbers that show whether residents finish the task you chose in step 1.

The story

Small changes in the finish rate add up. If 2 in 100 visitors finish a task today and you take that to 4 in 100, you have doubled the online reports without a single extra visitor. That is also the number your head of service and contact centre care about, because every extra online finish is a call that didn't happen.

What to do

Set up three kinds of report for your chosen task. Keep the technical side light; what matters is knowing what to look at.

Objective report. One line over time: where you are today, last quarter, the forecast and the objective from step 1. Anyone in the council can see whether you are on track, and the value the website already delivers.
Step report. How many residents reach each step of your map, and where they drop out. This shows the value you could add.
Resident report. The same task split by groups that matter: device, location, landing page, how they arrived and the search words they used. This shows where the opportunities are.

Put a 15 minute check in the diary every week. Look for the step where the drop is biggest; that's your next fix.

Try this week

Find out whether your analytics can tell you how many residents reached the confirmation page for your chosen task last month. If it can't, that's your first job.