General summary
In general, people have a positive view of the website and feel that it has improved over the years. Newer technologies, such as podcasting and videos, are proving to be increasingly popular and are being successfully used by a larger proportion of respondents.
Profile of respondents
Responses were received from
115
countries, with India, the United States, Latin America, Western Europe and China being strongly represented. Most respondents were either from academic or governmental organizations but over 20% were from the private sector. Respondents were predominantly Anglophone but the Spanish and French speaking contingents are increasing steadily year on year, to about 20% and 15% respectively. Respondents are predominantly using Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer to access the site. The majority now have broadband connections and the speed of these has increased over the years but some people are still using dial-up access.
General appreciation of the website
Almost 90% of respondents said that they found the site “very useful” or “fairly useful”. Their appreciation of its usefulness has increased over the years, as has the frequency of their visits. Over 30% visit the site several times per week and almost one in five visit on a daily basis. Over 50% said that they often downloaded WTO documents. Respondents are principally looking for news about the negotiations, general information about the organization, official documents and WTO publications.
New media
An increasing number of respondents have been able to use the new media features of the site, such as webcasting and podcasting, and their appreciation of these materials is generally positive. The proportion of respondents who have successfully used the webcasting facility has doubled since 2004. Many people suggested that webcasting should be extended to more meetings to increase transparency and to allow officials outside Geneva to follow WTO activities. Over 50% of respondents asked for more videos of WTO experts.
Some people have difficulties due to their machines or internet connections not being able to display video content or their organizations blocking them from viewing videos. Some respondents requested video material in languages other than English.
Training
About 30% found distance learning courses useful but half of the respondents were not aware that such material existed. Many respondents would like more training courses that are not restricted to government officials.
Problem areas
The problem most highlighted by respondents was the difficulty finding information. This was mentioned by 41% of respondents. For example, over 35% said they were “unaware” that country pages existed or they were “difficult to find” while over 30% ticked “unaware it existed” or “hard to find” regarding the dispute pages. Respondents' preferred method of navigation is through home page links. This was the preferred option for over 38%.
The second biggest problem area is the search engine, which was highlighted as a problem by 12%. Respondents indicated that the current search engine is not sufficient for their needs. Almost 20% said that they rarely or never found the results of the search engine useful. They said that it often returns documents that have only peripheral relevance and does not necessarily indicate the most recent documents. Respondents complained that there is no possibility of ranking results by date or by relevance and there is no possibility of searching within the results. Over 35% said that the search engine was the area in most need of improvement on the web site.
French and Spanish users complained that the translations of material arrive too slowly and that a significant proportion of material is only available in English. This is especially true for video and podcasting material but also for presentations from various WTO events. There were also requests for the website to be in other languages, particularly Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic.
The frequency of use of Documents Online, where official WTO documents can be found, has increased but respondents still report problems accessing documents. Over 40% said that they used Documents Online “very often” but almost 20% said that the process was “complicated” or “impossible”. Respondents identified several problems: (1) difficulties in locating the document they are looking for; (2) search results page not clearly explaining how to view the document in Word so users view unformatted html instead; (3) the complicated process of extracting the downloaded documents if the user chooses to download several documents at once; (4) the difficulty in opening documents in older file formats, such as Wordperfect, Lotus Notes or RFT.
Additional complaints include the delay in getting some material onto the website (particularly minutes from meetings) and the fact that users have to keep checking to see if material has been added, the lack of detailed statistical information (and the delay in making it available), the lack of information about members' participation in the WTO (positions in the negotiations, statements from ministers, agreements they are party to, conformance and implementation of commitments), the lack of information or existence of fact sheets at an intermediate level (between the simple overview and complicated technical documents) and the lack of updated information on GATS, accessions and regional trade agreements.
Finally some respondents are looking for information that is outside the scope of the WTO website, such as commodity prices, trade opportunities with individual countries and complaints against specific companies. |
