Rocky View County has launched a redesigned website aimed at making it faster and easier for residents to interact with the County and its programs and services.
“We’ve completely redone rockyview.ca and added dozens of new features for people who live and work in Rocky View,” says County Communications Manager, Grant Kaiser. We’ve put the resident’s perspective at the forefront. The new website is organized the way people think, rather than the way County departments are structured.”
The new site has a less-cluttered design, and the content has been changed to be easier to read and understand, he added.
There’s less jargon, larger fonts, and more graphics, lists, and bullets,Kaiser says. People are busy, and municipal information can be complex, so we worked hard to make things understandable and easy to find.
Kaiser says the County put special focus on improving how residents move around the website, how they search, and how much time it takes to get things done. Among the new features is an adaptive search engine that learns the everyday wording people use to provide more relevant results.
“We have an Animal Control Bylaw, but if people tend to search for rules for dogs instead, the system will learn to link those things together. Searches on our website will be a bit clunky to start, but the system will become outstanding as it learns from residents,” said Kaiser.
On the technology side, Rocky View County’s new site adapts text and graphics for different screen sizes and devices. Buttons become larger on touch-screens, graphics are eliminated on small screens, and the order, orientation, and look of information adjusts for tablets, e-readers, and other devices.
“We didn’t want a pared-down mobile site,” said Kaiser. “Rocky View County’s entire website automatically changes to give you full and fast access on virtually any web device.” Major corporations haven’t pulled this off yet, so Rocky View County is definitely on the cutting edge of full accessibility, says Kaiser.
New sections have been added to the site, including enhanced information for each of the County’s 16 communities.
“All our residents are important, and our website now reflects that,” he said. “There’s community information for everyone from Dalroy to Bearspaw, Keoma to Springbank.”
One of the most important reasons for developing a new site was to support future online services, Kaiser added.
Over the next few years we’ll be giving residents the option to do all kinds of things online that currently require a visit to our administration building. “We now have a platform that can support future online payments, work requests, project tracking, and more,” he said.
Kaiser says the website project came in at 30 percent below its $100,000 budget.
“Many municipalities are spending between $250,000 and $3 million for new websites,” he said. a project we can all be very proud of.
