The A to Z of services is a simple list of links designed to help users to navigate a council website. Their usage is now in decline, but they can still be found on around a third of UK and Irish council websites. This article looks at the background to the humble A to Z of services and why it became a standard feature on most council websites. We then consider their current usage and try to understand why they are being removed by councils.
The background to the A to Z of services and their popularity on council websites
The background to the use of A to Z of council services can be traced back to the Government’s E-Government initiative at the turn of the 21st Century. This proposed that all dealings with government should deliverable electronically. Under the Government’s Best Value Performance Indicator 157 (BVPI 157), councils were legally required to prove they were moving services online. To assist with this a standardised Local Government Category List (LGCL) was introduced and adopted by local authorities. Councils were required to provide an A to Z of services on their websites using the Local Government Category List as the agreed taxonomy.
I experienced E-Government first hand as a council web manager and can remember the work that went into pulling our first A to Z of council services together. At that time council web search engines were often rudimentary and inadequate, so providing residents with an alternative form of navigation was a step foward. User research also suggested that residents and council staff often preferred the humble A to Z of services to other navigation options.
How many councils have included an A to Z of services on their website?
As far as I am aware there are no official figures available to understand how many councils actually introduced an A to Z of services as part of E-Government. So I decided to check this out for myself using the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. This remarkable resource is a digital archive of the World Wide Web that allows you to see how websites looked and functioned in the past. I checked all 410 UK and Ireland council websites on the Wayback Machine in and around the years of of e-government.
The results detailed below on the Infogram show that the majority of council websites have in the past included an A to Z of services on their website.
Overall around 90% of councils have included this feature. The figure is actually far higher if you exclude Irish councils (23) and councils that have only relatively recently been formed (8 – Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Broadland and South Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, Cumberland, East Northamptonshire, Lewes and Eastbourne and North Northamtonshire).
How many councils currently have an A to Z of services?
Over the last ten years the number of councils that include an A to Z of services on their websites has dramatically declined. As you can see from the Infogram below less than a third of councils (131 councils – 31.95%) have an A to Z. Over two thirds of councils (279 – 68.05%) now don’t include this feature.
Why have councils removed A to Z of services from their websites?
There are number of possible reasons why councils have removed the A to Z of services index from their websites:
- Improved search facilities have made the A to Z of services redundant
- Usage of the A to Z has dropped off
- Accessibility concerns – large lists of links are difficult for screen readers and keyboard-only navigation users to digest
- Updating an A to Z of services can be time consuming
- It is part of a general trend to reduce unnecessary clutter on webpages
What has replaced the A to Z of services:
- Predictive search
- AI services
- Task based categories which focus on popular user actions, such as Pay, Report and Apply
- Curated content design – links that are organised by popularity and user demand data rather than alphabetical order
Should more councils remove the A to Z of services from their websites?
The use of A to Z of services will undoubtedly continue to decline. In my humble opinion it is a feature that has served its purpose well and should now be retired across the sector. Councils clearly need to decide this for themselves and some user research on this would be a sensible starting point. It is no longer a feature that is mandated by central government and it is a navigation relic that can now be usefully removed.
A to Z of services on council websites (UK & Ireland) – Research
You can view my research about A to Z of services on council websites below. The research includes details of councils with A to Z of services and web addresses for these for you to view. Please get in contact if you have any feedback or want to report any updates to the research.