An Award-Winning Website Redesign Connects Corvallis with Its Community
Corvallis, OR
After months of development and refinement, City of Corvallis's new website launched early December 2017. The redesigned website sports a fresh look and feel designed to display information across a variety of platforms, including mobile devices, tablets and desktop computers.
Topics Covered
Cost
Initial: 32 Thousand USD
O&M: 6 Thousand USD
Funding
General Fund/Existing Public Funds
Project Status
Operational since 2017
Gov Champion
Public Information Officer
Problem Addressed
Corvallis, Oregon's site had not undergone a substantive redesign since 2011.
The old page was outdated, difficult to maintain, and struggled to meet ADA compliance. Web standards and audience expectations had changed considerably in that time period, and so the project managers were eager to bring the site up to modern standards.
"We were a bit apprehensive about the impact to staff, particularly because we have more than 30 employees who contribute to the website across all city departments. Some of them only access the website once a month, whereas others are logged in daily. We needed a user-friendly interface that was easy to navigate for infrequent users, with plenty of extra features for power users. I think we got the best of both worlds in our new site,” said Public Information Officer Patrick W. Rollens.
Solutions Used
A reorganized homepage provided a welcoming entrance to the City of Corvallis, featuring a prominent search box and key links to popular services such as job openings, payments to the City, bus service routes and the weekly meeting calendar.
The project managers at the City were particularly excited to bring responsive, mobile-friendly features to the new website. With almost half of the City’s web traffic coming from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, providing an improved experience for mobile users was crucial.
“We looked closely at web traffic metrics to determine exactly which services people were accessing when they visited the City website, and used that information to help guide our redesign effort,” said Public Information Officer Patrick W. Rollens.
Outcomes
1
An organized, more attractive, easier to use website.
2
Increase in transparency and accessibility by allowing users to access from multiple platforms.
3
An award-winning redesign completed under-budget and ahead of schedule. Corvallis won 3CMA's Silver Circle award in 2018!
Something Unique
The website is built using Drupal, a robust, open-source web development platform, to ensure that the website remains customizable, easy to use and secure.
Who Should Consider
Municipalities looking to update their websites to increase user friendliness.
Last Updated
Jul 29th, 2019Keywords
