It’s the government department all working people love to hate. We pay them every month without really knowing what our money is used for and we rarely get something in return. We all hope to get a little something back at the end of the financial year – yes, it’s the South African Revenue Service (sars.co.za) we are talking about.

The Website Under Review

This document is dedicated to the official website of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) (sars.co.za). The website is fairly easy to find, it is the first search result under a global Google search for the term “South African revenue services”. The search result takes you to a gov.za site, yet there is also a co.za site. Neither of the two redirects to the other which can be a bit confusing to if you’re not quite sure which the correct domain is.

The Target Market

This website is for any South African that needs information about taxes, from VAT, pay as you earn to business and import taxes. Because of the wide target audience one would think they would give more attention to making it more user friendly.

Overview of the Website

The website design has three distinct areas that remain stagnant across the website. The font size could be a bit bigger; it is quite small and can provide problems for people who have bad eyesight. There isn’t an option to increase the font size as one would find on certain websites.

The website structure does incorporate lots of wide space which does makes it easier to read, and there are no flash animations or scrolling text which can be distracting.

The colours are a bit bland, and one doesn’t really see their corporate colours in the website. This can add to the confusion about whether you are on the correct website. It is very important that websites have some form of authentication; because this is the kind of website where people are getting information about things that affect them directly. With the amount of fraud going around in South Africa it would provide some peace of mind by having a secure site, especially on their co.za domain.

Website structure and website features

Due to the nature of the website there are quite a lot of definitions for the various types of taxes. What they have however not done is give definitions of the technical terms. This website must cater for a wide audience and terms like disposable assets might not be understood by everyone. There are no indication of website SEO copy.

The home page is a bit muddled with too many hyperlinks in the general text. This can cause confusion and makes the page harder to read. If they do want this on the home page, it will be much easier to read if it is put into bullet format.

One of the website features that must definitely be updated is its search function. Searching for something like “registering for tax” gives you a number of documents, none of them related to the actual registration on the website for e-filing.

One of the great features is the very visible breadcrumb trail it gives you. What they can however introduce is making the path hyperlinked so that you can return to the page you were on previously without using the back button on the browser.

Conclusion

This website (sars.co.za) contains vast amounts of valuable information, all it needs is a bit of a reshuffle and a image makeover to make this touchy issue more appealing to the target market.

 Email: info@etraffic.co.za for more details.