Findings from HTA website survey and interviews

Read the key findings from the evaluation that we carried out on this website, and find out what we plan to do next.

Issue date: 13 February 2009

Background

Following the decision that the HTA should remain as a stand-alone regulator, in 2008 we completed some evaluation work into how we can improve our website. As part of this project we carried out an online survey and interviewed people from the different sectors we regulate.

The aim of the online survey was to form a greater understanding of the users to our site, and to capture users’ views on the content, layout and structure. During the interviews we asked participants how well they felt the site represented the HTA and how easy it was to use.

The results were extremely informative and a summary of the main findings is provided in this document.

Findings

The main findings from the user testing interviews and online survey are listed below:

Perception of the HTA
The importance of the HTA’s role as an advisor and regulator was well recognised. The HTA was described as a good communicator with stakeholders. However some respondents were not aware of the details of what the HTA does.

Interaction
Respondents commented that the HTA has a number of good ways of communicating with stakeholders, including the website, email, phone, e-newsletter, consultations and events, training and sector-specific updates.

The HTA’s homepage
Respondents commented that the homepage does not stand out visually from the other pages. When navigating through the website, respondents were not sure whether they were looking at the homepage or at other pages, and they also commented that it was not clear who the main audiences of the website are.

Content and organisation
Respondents had difficulty finding content on the site. They also said that there appears to be a greater focus on licensing rather than any other area of work the HTA is involved in.

Search engine
The online survey data revealed that the search engine was the one aspect of the HTA website that caused users the most frustration. On many occasions, the search did not return any relevant results, e.g. when searching for ‘online training’ the HTA e-learning courses did not appear in the search results.

Website statistics

Analysis of our website statistics showed that 69,267 people visited the HTA website in the period we ran the survey (752 per day). Of these, 25,098 visited only once, while 5,480 visited more than once. The average visitor visited the site 2.27 times.

Apart from the homepage (30.95%), the top entry pages were the search page (5.90%), the media releases page (5.43%) and the codes of practice page (4.16%). These pages were also the most viewed pages.

Next steps

The next stage of this project is to plan for the changes that we will be making to the website, based on the comments that we have received. As part of this work, we recently carried out an online exercise (called a card sort) to help decide the revised layout and structure of the website.

We plan to launch the updated HTA website during the summer.