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Web Site is 1 Year Old
The London Ambulance UNISON branch launched it's web
site on the 1 July 2003 and will celebrate it's first birthday on
the 1st July 2004.
So has it been worth it? Well the site regularly attracts over 2,500
unique visitors every month and in February recorded over 27,000 page
hits!, so we can see it is being used. Feedback has been very
positive from users who submitted
feedback via the online form. We have also started building up a
good subscriber list to our
online newsletter
which enables us to update our members as soon as the news happens
compared to the old paper method which could sometimes take nearly 2
weeks.
We also run a monthly prize draw
of £50 for subscribers.
The site and our e-mail newsletter have both proved to be an extremely
effective tool in communicating with our members. Back at the end of
January when the ASU were spreading their lies to stations, we were able
to respond within hours, sending our response direct to registered
subscribers and displaying our message on the web site for members to
read. This may in fact have accounted for the massive surge in visitors
for the month of February. Trying to communicate quickly to over 70
sites spread across London was always a difficult task and sometimes the
message wouldn't get through, but now we have the means to communicate
to every station and even to members homes. Be sure you
subscribe to our newsletter,
it's the best way to keep informed of what's happening within UNISON &
the LAS and especially with Agenda
for Change
almost upon us, we can update you with the latest news, plus of course
you have the chance every month to
win £50!
So come on, Sign up!
Since the launch of the site it has had no reported problems and has
been online 99.9% of the time which is pretty good, except for one
weekend in May when our hosts updated our server. The result of this was
strangely that all of our navigational links 'disappeared'. It took
about 48 hours to restore them and so far nobody has reported any that
are missing, but if you have noticed any missing then let us know. There
was a good side to this though, our hosts are now able to offer us many
new features which we hope to incorporate in the site over the next few
months. To celebrate the site reaching it's first
birthday we decided to give the home page a radical new facelift which
was in part a response to user
feedback. Due to the volume of information contained on the home
page it was taking a bit of time to open on dial up connections. While
this wasn't much of a problem for users accessing the site on a service
pc which has a fast connection we decided that the site must be
accessible to as many users as possible and the facelift has reduced
download times by over 50%. The page now also displays many more initial
links that have been grouped into 4 different sections to enable you to
find the information you were looking for quicker. The 4
groups are: About Us
which features links that explain more about the union and the branch
including contact information and frequently asked questions. Member
Benefits contains links to the main benefits page featuring a whole
host of benefits available plus a small selection of some of the most
popular benefits. Your Unison is all about what's going on in the
branch and the union such as the coming events page and Notice board
which is our online version of your station notice board plus press
releases, minutes of meetings and the chance to update the details we
have about you online. Explore features links to some of the
different groups and sections within the union such as Welfare,
Education, Health & safety and of course agenda for change.
The site is constantly being updated from adding the latest news story
to new pages and whole new sections devoted to a particular topic or
section of the union. We welcome your
feedback on the site and would be
particularly interested on your comments and views on our re-designed
home page. Tell us what works and what doesn't, what's good and what is
downright awful. Remember this is your union and your web site. We do! |
