BOE communications chief reports 1.2M+ site views, expands social outreach

John Taylor, the Board of Equalization’s new chief communications officer, presented a first quarterly communications report outlining web metrics, expanded social content and plans to improve multilingual and mobile access.

Taylor said BOE web pages received more than 1.2 million page views in the first quarter, with the agency homepage the most visited and the property tax landing page next. He noted the Proposition 19 page saw roughly 43,000 additional views in the quarter and “nearly 1 million views since its launch.” Taylor said the office is expanding social content (for example, “find your board member” posts and features on the Taxpayer Rights Advocate) and will roll out a new monthly educational topic to highlight services and outcomes.

On accessibility and user experience, Taylor reported analytics show a higher share of users on desktop relative to mobile and that nearly 60% of visitors use Google Chrome, about 26% use Safari and roughly 10% use Microsoft Edge. He said the communications team will reduce reliance on PDFs and improve mobile‑friendly HTML content, and add an HTML option to information sheets to allow machine translation access in more languages.

Taylor also said the office will introduce a communications plan with the Taxpayer Rights Advocate Office for an upcoming taxpayers’ bill of rights hearing later in the summer, and that the BOE will encourage county assessors to share educational posts on their channels.

Members asked for more granular language analytics and clarification on platform choices; Taylor said enhanced analytics for language usage and browser defaults are forthcoming.