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It’s now several months since the suspension of the cobweb campaign, Anne Redston’s drive – via the pages of Taxation – to force the Revenue to sweep the dust out the corners of its online offering.
She declared an end to her efforts after a positive response from the department, which began to come clean about information and guidance that was contradictory and/or outdated and/or just plain perplexing.
For one week only, I’m reviving the cobweb campaign (sort of) because I want check the cleanliness of one of the other fundamentals of HMRC.gov.uk: its page design.
To do this, I’ll need…
- A friendly, point-by point guide to creating a decent page. This I have courtesy of internet know-it-all About.com.
- A typical example of the taxman’s web work: one aimed at agents and advisers, of course. I choose TTM01030 - Legislative changes in 2005, which caused Anne some distress by not existing.
- Impartiality. It’s not something I’d usually consider myself having, but… check!
Let’s do this thing.
1. Know your audience.
HMRC’s readership is just about everyone – or at least the millions and millions of different people and businesses that pay taxes. As such, the department has its work cut out. The page in question, from the Tax Tonnage Manual (TTM), is concise and useful for tax professionals. Or so I’m told by colleagues who know these things. We all agree that the links within are a positive thing.
Result: good.
2. Keep pages short
This one’s about 32cm from top to bottom, the same length as this wooden kitchen fork. Ha, ha! Seriously, I’m not the fastest reader and it took me one minute and 46 seconds to read, which unless you’re, say, being smacked in the chops with a wet Yellow Book isn’t any time at all.
Result: good.
3. Use tables of contents
Our page here isn’t a main landing page (although it does have those links to other pages of the TTM).
Result: n/a.
4. Keep images small
There aren’t any images. If there were, they would probably be small, like the few that do appear on the Revenue’s site. But there aren’t, so the point is moot.
Result: n/a.
5. Use browser-safe colours
Doing so will ensure consistency across all web browsers and screen resolutions. The TTM page – and indeed most of the Revenue’s site – employs a white background and black text. Both hues are cool, but the header’s teal (code #008080) is not. For shame!
Result: indifferent.
6. Avoid lots of text
Aw, come on! How else other than by words could the taxman communicate legislative changes to tonnage tax? With a colourful pie chart, or as an animated gif of Dave Hartnett posing as the captain of a dredger? A podcast might add extra value, but the stuff an adviser is most likely to need is right there on the page. And, as noted before, there aren’t that many words.
Result: good enough.
7. Check spelling
There are no mistakes, according to the spell-checker on Microsoft Word. (I C&P’d the text.) The cavalier approach to capital letters is unlovely, mind. I’m sure ‘tonnage tax’ shouldn’t claim to be a pronoun, and nor should ‘emergency response and rescue vessels’. Pedantry aside…
Result: not satisfactory for a picky journalist, but Word reckons its fine.
8. Keep links current
They all work and go through to the appropriate pages.
Result: that was an easy one!
9. Annotate links
The principal of this rule is to prevent readers from having to guess where they will be taken – which means no ‘click here for more’ type hyperlinks, but explicitly titled versions. With reference to our page of the taxman’s, the links may look like code to those who have not been accepted into the cabal that is tax advising, but the initiated will find them clear enough.
Result: another good one.
10. Include contact information
Weeelll… there’s a prominent ‘contact us’ link in the header. So, job done – in principle. The page to which the user is taken, however, is a bewildering list of options. And then there’s the Sisyphean task of getting through and obtaining the required information…
Result: good (but with a caveat emptor).
The outcome
I think we can agree our sample page has come out quite well. No spring cleaning is required. And that is heartening. I’m pretty certain that the rest of the Revenue’s site is equally well-designed.
I’ll just, er, give'em a quick look.
Call me Lawrence Oates...
UPDATE 24 Feb: Safari users - I'm aware of the possible irony in the fact that Taxation.co.uk's pages look wrong when viewed in your browser of choice.
This is an issue for many websites, and one on which we're working to correct.
