The ‘Most Read|Done|Active on GOV.UK’ list earns space on the home page because it helps to demonstrate the type of information and tools that are available, and also gives a sense that other people are using the site. These are amongst the objectives of the home page at launch, but this may change over time. The list may also provide a handy short cut to popular items… But with this as with all things on GOV.UK we’ll see if/how/why it gets used, and learn from that. As you rightly put it – any feature on the home page, or any page, needs to earn its place.

Map = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/live_stats/html/map.stm
Info = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/5065806.stm

Just been told we collect a lot of stats on gov.uk via Google Analytics.
Will be interesting to compare it with direct.gov.uk data I have.
I’ll set myself up and have a look, at some point.

Gov.uk isn’t doing either of those things, because the needs it is addressing are primarily external to the site. Either I need a new passport or I do not. Either I have lost my job and need to find a new one or I haven’t. Knowing that student finance login is the second most popular activity is not, alas, going to to make me a student again.

So I think there is a question which comes before what this list should be called, which is what it is for. I realise that I don’t know the answer, though I am sure that GDS will have thought about it. If you were to have to complete the following sentence, what would you put?

“The ‘Most Read|Done|Active on GOV.UK’ list earns space on the home page because it…”

You’re right that one of our objectives is to “get people to the quick do” and we talk a lot about doing, and not so much about reading. That said, there are still a lot of Guides on the site, for people who want to read a bit about what’s involved before getting stuck in with the doing, so I’m not sure we can go all out for “Most done”, but how about “Most active”? That’s the current suggestion at GOV.UK HQ, but what do you think?

And on other notes… we’re still optimising for mobile, and tuning the font, so those should both be rather more polished by the time we come out of Beta! If you spot anything else that you think needs attention then let us know at govuk-feedback@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk

Popular actions
Popular pages/guides

I think the current .gov.uk page is a huge improvement on earlier iterations (my youngest child quite enjoyed the challenge of the carousel). I hope they nail the problems with their Webfont – text still sometimes looks scratchy in Firefox.