§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the total cost of her Department's website was in real terms in each of the last four years; and how many hits it received in each of those years. [36147]
§ Mr. Ivan LewisCore programme cost for the Department for Education and Skills central website (real terms figures are all compared with 2000–01 cost) were as follows.
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£ 1997–98 42,275 1998–99 82,420 1999–2000 137,328 2000–01 261,000 2001–02 640,976 There is now wide acceptance among professionals in the web industry that hits are not a measure of site performance. So the Department, in line with the Government, as a whole gives more importance to unique visitors and page impressions than hits.
For example, the Department made a big effort in 2000 to speed up download times by reducing numbers of files on the site, hence hits went down from 173 million in 2000, to 89 million in 2001, while use was increasing.
Reliable site traffic figures are only available since January 2000.
Estimated site traffic for year 1999 is as follows:
Hits: 11.4 million.Site traffic for year 2000 is as follows:
Unique visitors: average 1,293.000 per monthPage views: 43.7 million.