Life Events - EU Bookshop - Europa
Life Events - EU Bookshop - Europa
Life Events - EU Bookshop - Europa
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Single strategies (i.e., portal-only and search-only) were the most eff ective;<br />
the mixed strategies are concerned the ‘search-then-portal’ took considerably<br />
longer; and the least eff ective strategy was portal-then-search. Indeed, a<br />
signifi cant proportion of those users who started with government portals<br />
perceived the portal as not eff ective in providing the information they needed<br />
and had to change towards the use of an open search method.<br />
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Users who were pointed towards government portals (the treatment group)<br />
took signifi cantly longer to fi nd the right information.<br />
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Lastly, users found their questions answered signifi cantly faster by searching<br />
on private sector sites and Wikipedia rather than on government sites.<br />
Th ese fi ndings may indicate two trends: fi rst, the information provided on<br />
the tested government portals is diffi cult to fi nd and, second, navigation<br />
through established paths on<br />
government portals is not<br />
necessarily optimal when<br />
users in a trial setting are<br />
trying to fi nd the very targeted<br />
information that is needed in<br />
relation to a specifi c life event.<br />
Hence, information provision<br />
is not optimised so that users<br />
can fi nd it quickly by following<br />
diff erent navigation paths.<br />
Two lessons can be drawn here from the private sector, and both provide learnings<br />
for government services:<br />
First, online stores off er a “mystery shopping” approach. Th e stores are based<br />
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around key “sticky points”. Th ese points provide separate elements or services<br />
that suggest, recommend and link users to the right information or service based<br />
on the users’ search criteria. Th is approach facilitates a disaggregated search<br />
approach and thereby produces relevant results and links to related topics. Such<br />
an approach involves using a range of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 strategies: Web<br />
9 •••