Puffbox

Doing a bit of research for my presentation in Oslo tomorrow (of which more later), I came across a somewhat surprising figure in Hansard.

Directgov cost us £30.7 million in the year 2008-09 – well over double what it cost us the previous year. Of that £30.7 million, £7.48 million went on ‘advertising, public relations, publicity and marketing’. As one wag pointed out on Twitter, that would buy you a lot of orange.

Did it work? Well, the best comparison I data I can lay my hands on is Hitwise market share, courtesy of Public Sector Forums – and Directgov went from 9.14% of ‘central government’ traffic in March 2008, to 17.02% a year later. Of course, that doesn’t mean traffic has doubled… and it has to be seen in the light of web rationalisation, whereby Directgov is eating other websites.

Sadly, the last PQ on Directgov traffic seems to have been in December last year; and DG’s own traffic page only quotes the last 3 months. And even then, the numbers are curious to say the least. They can’t provide a unique user figure for August this year. And somehow, between September and October, unique users more than doubled, whilst visits fell by 8%, and page impressions fell by 11%. Eh?