Digital Certainty Index™ (DCI™)

Owned by Chelsea Shadowens (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 19, 2021 by Ericca Rowe
3 min read

Siteimprove’s Digital Certainty Index (DCI) measures the quality and potential impact of a website’s digital presence, including its credibility and trustworthiness, accessibility and usability, and its ability to respond to search engine optimization (SEO) challenges.

Example of DCI Score in GovHub Analytics

Example of DCI Score in GovHub Analytics

How Your DCI Score Is Calculated

Your website’s DCI Score is calculated based on its performance across three categories: Quality Assurance, SEO, and Accessibility. Each category makes up one third (33.33%) of your overall DCI Score. When combined, they give you a comprehensive overview of issues across all three categories, highlighting issues that need to be fixed and providing recommendations on how to fix them.

  • Quality Assurance – This reflects your website’s credibility and trustworthiness regarding its user-facing characteristics.

  • SEO – This shows how well the user-facing and technical aspects of your site contribute to search engine optimization, and ultimately, higher rankings and organic traffic.

  • Accessibility – This demonstrates how well your website tests against web accessibility standards set out in WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0.

How to Use Your DCI Score Dashboard

Your website’s DCI Score Dashboard can be found on your Siteimprove Dashboard. The DCI Score Dashboard displays four scores in total, each of which is housed in its own module:

  • Digital Certainty Index (Your DCI Score) – To see an overview of your DCI Score, click on the DCI overview button in the Digital Certainty Index module. This will take you to a detailed page that gives you a comprehensive overview of issues that need to be fixed across all categories, organized based on the impact they have on your website’s DCI Score. You’ll also see recommendations on how to fix each issue.

  • Quality Assurance – To see an overview of your Quality Assurance Score, click on the Improve Score button in the Quality Assurance score module. This will take you to a detailed page that’s organized based on the impact each issue has on your website’s Quality Assurance Score. You’ll also see recommendations on how to fix each issue.

  • SEO – To see an overview of your SEO Score, click on the Improve Score button in the SEO score module. This will take you to a detailed page that’s organized based on the impact each issue has on your website’s SEO Score. You’ll also see recommendations on how to fix each issue.

  • Accessibility – To see an overview of your Accessibility Score, click on the Improve Score button in the Accessibility score module. This will take you to a detailed page that’s organized based on the impact each issue has on your website’s Accessibility Score. You’ll also see recommendations on how to fix each issue.

Example of DCI Score Dashboard in GovHub Analytics

Example of DCI Score Dashboard in GovHub Analytics