City Website Wins Silver Circle Award
The City of Corvallis has received the Silver Circle Award from the City-County Communications and Marketing Association (3CMA) for last year’s website redesign project. The award, part of 3CMA’s annual Savvy Awards competition, honors the multi-department team of employees in Corvallis who guided the project from inception to completion, as well as the web development team at Municode, which handled the technical aspects of the project, from design to content migration to ongoing support.
The website redesign got underway at the beginning of 2017, more than five years after the previous redesign. 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.
With a diverse portfolio of municipal clients, Municode proved to be a capable partner in this endeavor. The firm’s branch office in Lake Oswego, Ore., allowed the two teams to meet in person at key points throughout the redesign process.
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, it was crucial to provide an improved experience for mobile users.
In addition, the team worked hard to ensure a smooth transition for the staff users of the website. More than 30 staff members across all departments use the website. Some of them only access the website once a month, whereas others are logged in daily. The team wanted a user-friendly interface that was easy to navigate for infrequent users, with plenty of extra features for power users. Municode delivered on this requirement through Drupal, the open-source content management system that powers the new website.
“This website redesign was one of the first major projects for the new IT Department at the city,” said IT Director Michael Livingston. “We pulled together an effective, knowledgeable team and empowered them to approach the project as they saw fit. We also examined our previous website redesign effort from 2012 and looked for ways to improve on that process. I’m pleased that those efforts paid off with this award.”
The website went live in December 2017, under budget and ahead of schedule. Since then, feedback from staff and the general public has been positive.
“I’ve been particularly impressed with the customer support we’ve received from Municode since the site went live,” said Public Information Officer Patrick W. Rollens. “They’ve been highly responsive and always made us feel like their biggest customer.”
The Silver Circle Award was announced at the 3CMA annual conference in Milwaukee in September. Judges praised the website’s clean homepage and department pages, as well as the attractive events calendar.
