The Venture - A Case Study

The principal mandate of the Municipal Website Venture is to substantially improve the standard of municipal websites. Creating a new website with an attractive, professional design with enhanced functionality, accessibility and usability is certainly part of the equation. But unless there is evidence to show that upgrading a website will make a real difference the only reason a municipality would consider getting a new website is because the idea makes sense. Having data to back up the concept, on the other hand, provides a much more compelling argument.

The following is a case study for the Town of Berwick. Google Analytics, a website monitoring service, was used to gather statistics. The information shows the change of website traffic between the month of October, 2007 when the old website was up and the month of May, 2008 with the new website. Even though there are a few discrepancies the trend clearly demonstrates a dramatic increase in website usage.

Berwick - A Case Study

  October-07
(old website)		 May-08
(updated website)
 % Change
Total Visits 2135 2528 18%
Unique Visitors 1639 1915 17%
Pageviews 6020 13340 122%
Avg. Time on Site 1 minute 26 seconds 43 seconds 89%
Repeat Visits      
3 times 62 116 85%
6 times 13 28 115%
9-14 times 29 81 179%
15-25 times 32 78 144%
Time on Website      
1-3 minutes 296 467 58%
3-10 minutes 189 364 93%
10-30 minutes 50 160 220%
over 30 minutes 12 23 92%
Depth of Visit      
3 pages 212 277 31%
5 pages 75 131 75%
10 pages 11 44 300%
15 pages 6 30 400%
20 or more pages 29 104 259%