www.gov.uk - The UK Govt's replacement for BusinessLink.gov.uk!

[lordlancaster]

What do people think of the UK Govt's proposed new website which will replace the existing Business Link site at the end of this year?

Cabinet Office is developing a replacement for Businesslink.gov which provides support for businesses wanting to start up and grow. The new site ' www.gov.uk ', will be available later this year.

More information about this site on the new single domain for Government, and a test (beta) version of the site, can be found at www.gov.uk and http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/...beta-of-gov-uk and www.gov.uk.

The site will meet the needs of business users and citizens and aims to be simpler, faster and clearer than the websites it replaces.

Do you like the new look? Is it an improvement on the current www.businesslink.gov.uk website or would you like to keep things as they are?

[adam_greenough]

A much much improved design and interface with much clearer information for the basic stuff. My issue with the 'simpler and clearer' aim they're going for is that it's really assuming that everybodies questions can be answered with just black and white answers, don't get me wrong this is probably the case a lot of the time but there's not much emphasis on the more personal options such as career and business advisors or help desks.

[lordlancaster]

Good point. I'm wondering if the pursuit of a simpler, cleaner design may mean some information is being missed off although I guess that's why they're keeping a Google type search function (see the explanation in their tour at https://www.gov.uk/tour)

[lordlancaster]

It's also interesting to note that the Government Digital Service – ‘a new team within Cabinet Office tasked with transforming government digital services’ are using a WordPress blog instead of paying for an expensive, fancy website.

Once their free WordPress blog was created, they’ve simply paid for a premium upgrade template costing just $68.

Apart from the obvious time and cost savings in doing it this way, I think there’s also a bit of ‘we’re using WordPress to show that we’re cool and down with the kids’ going

[James Smith]

@Paul, being ever cynical it may only have cost a few $, I imagine some external consultant has charged at least £50,000 to download it and pocketed the difference given there was probably a big budget for the site....