Fast track to detailed content – the results

Recently we ran a series of tests asking you to find detailed content on ato.gov.au. We wanted to see whether providing additional links in an accordion or drop-down menu helped you find the information you needed quickly and easily.

What you had to do

We asked you to find a number of pages on our website about a specific topic. To do this, you clicked on a link hidden within an ‘Additional Material’ accordion drop-down menu at the bottom of the page.

We also asked you to complete a short survey about our ‘Additional Material’ feature and the types of information you look for when visiting ato.gov.au.

The results are promising!

From the 311 participants – including 50 tax professionals – most of you found the tasks easy to complete.

You also gave us some valuable feedback about the design of the ‘Additional Material’ feature. You told us this feature:

• made it quick and easy to find links
• helped group page links in a logical way
• improved the readability of pages and ease of navigation
• was preferred over other content and links being visible all the time.

Tax professionals prefer more detail

Feedback from the survey shows a big difference in the types of information people want on ato.gov.au. As we suspected, tax professionals desire a lot more detail than non-practitioners – such as information on tax law including rulings, cases and policies.

What is really interesting is that 96% of tax-professionals said a section in the ‘Additional Material’ drop-down containing links specific to tax professionals would be useful.

“The feature is extremely useful, as quite often I will see something in a general article but want to then see the technical source of it (i.e. legislation, ruling PS LA, etc.) for further reading.”

Next steps – what we can improve

By participating in these tests you gave us a lot of valuable feedback about how we can improve the drop-down feature. This includes:

• providing more relevant content in our links
• improving the names used for section headings and titles
• providing clearer references to rulings

We’re working on making these improvements – watch this space.