While, we as web professionals, use an array of metrics to judge website success, the customer has arguably just one – “efficiently completing the task they came to do”. Customer do not choose to waste time surfing your site, they have better things to do. So whereas you might value time on the site or pages visited, these are rarely high up on a customer’s goals.  But, to improve task completion success rates, organizations need to know what makes up the top tasks – because these specific tasks MUST be  clear and evident. While this sounds obvious, so much so that hardly worth stating, many website fail the test. One big reason for this failure is that, to highlight top tasks, you must be prepared to make minor tasks less obvious – and this can be a political minefield – who wants their own task downgraded and kicked off the home  page?

So it is with interest to read about a local government conference in the UK to outline revised goals for website performance  reviews entitled “Better Connected 2012”. The organizers claim a major change in the assessment of local government websites. In the future, websites should focus heavily on ‘top tasks’. They go further insisting that a ‘top tasks’ approach as “essential to developing websites that work easily and quickly for customers, and, therefore, regard the concept as a key component of achieving channel shift.”

The conference promises to stimulate ideas to support the new thinking about content and presentation, where more is less, content prioritized and, above all, where meeting customer Top Task completion rates paramount.   The organizers further argue that this major shift in thinking is required to achieve ‘digital by default’, which is being thwarted by the lack of focus on the tasks that most customers want to complete.

Win a copy of "The Stranger's Long Neck"

We are delighted to see the involvement in the conference of Gerry McGovern, a long time friend and champion in the drive to highlight the business value of a Top Task approach. We would like to promote the conversation this side of the pond, and will offer FREE copies of Gerry’s Book “The Strangers Long Neck” for the best five suggestions of Top Task focused websites. Please add suggestion to the comment box below. They need not to be your own site, we are looking for sites that demonstrate good practice so we can share ideas and examples.

To learn more about this conference – visit the conference website