Bethlehem officials are looking to redesign the town’s website with an eye towards reaching a broader audience through use of social media.
On Wednesday, April 10, the Town Board approved a contract to allow the Kansas-based company Civic Plus to redesign the town’s website. The site was last updated seven years ago, according to town Director of Information Services Jeff Dammeyer.
“The new website will save time on the part of town staff, while giving us better communication abilities and a higher standard of accountability to the public,” said Town Supervisor John Clarkson.
Dammeyer said he had been looking into an upgrade for the site for some time. With the emergence of smartphones and the growing use of social media to obtain information at the local level, town officials want to better integrate the use of those technologies within the redesign.
On the new platform, each time a town official updates the website messages will automatically be sent out to the town’s social media accounts on services like Facebook and Twitter. The site will also be reformatted for smartphone displays, and a free Town of Bethlehem application will be available for download within Apple’s iTunes store.
The cost of the project is $25,000, with a future annual maintenance fee of $4,000. Funds for the project had already been set aside in the 2013 budget.
The redesign is also promised to simplify navigation of the site and help residents more easily reach the information they are looking for.
A tool on both the website and mobile application will include a request and complaint tracking system. Residents will be able to notify the town about subjects such as potholes or code violations immediately, and the messages will automatically be sent to the correct department. Another feature called “My Dashboard” will allow residents to create a login account, and then customize the site by picking the types of town information that most interests them.
“We expect less and less processes to be paper dependent as time goes on, and that’s good for the environment and the town’s budget,” said Clarkson. “We will have alternatives available for those who need them, but that’s the way the world is heading.”
The new site is expected to be online by the fall and a committee of town officials has volunteered to work on aesthetics and functionality. The package from Civic Plus comes with a free redesign of the site in four years, so as technology advances the site can stay up-to-date.
The site will be hosted externally in order to save money on internal hardware, software and maintenance. This also means that if a natural disaster strikes and the town loses power, Civic Plus can update the website with important information on behalf of the town.
Once the project is complete, the town will be given rights to the design, content and software. That way, the town can switch service providers and not be at risk of losing anything. Dammeyer said the site would also be compatible with the town’s content management system that operates the recently upgraded meeting video streaming and archival functions.
Clarkson said presentations on the site would be held closer to the launch date to let people know how the new tools work.
“It might take a little while for people to catch on, because there’s always a learning curve with these things,” he said.
Anyone wishing to contribute photographs to potentially be used on the site can send them to Robin Nangengast in the supervisor’s office at [email protected].