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Article:
The Characteristics
of a Great City Website
Nation's Cities Weekly, August, 1998

Cities across the country are rushing to prepare websites. A recent survey by the ICMA and Public Technology, Inc. showed that of the 60% of cities without a website, 65% will develop one over the next year.

Unfortunately, many cities take on the project without the proper planning or a thorough understanding of the complexity of municipal websites. Whether you are developing the website in-house, or are contracting with an outside firm, it’s important to carefully design, develop and implement your website.

As your city revs up its website development project, keep in mind seven important attributes of a good city web site: comprehensive, dynamic, interactive, functional, easy to use, easy to maintain and expandable.

Comprehensive - The greatest benefit of the Internet is the wealth of information that is to be found there. Research activities, whether for a purchasing decision or for a school report, are greatly simplified by the World Wide Web.

This has created an expectation by users of the Internet. When seeking city information on a service, ordinance, event or council meeting, they will be disappointed if they find only summary or cursory information. Some cities put a little information in each section of their site, presenting an overview of services and activities. While this gets your city on the Internet map, visitors will quickly lose interest in using the site as an information source.

Dynamic – People visiting a website expect the latest, most current information available. If visitors find outdated information on a website, they quickly eliminate that website as a future source of information.

The need to constantly refresh, change, and update content creates a significant challenge for cities. With careful planning you can minimize any extra work associated with the constant updating of information on the website. The best way to provide dynamic information is to take advantage of existing city processes and databases to feed content to your website.

Interactive - Like the dynamic elements of your site, interaction also ensures that members of your community will revisit your site frequently. There are several ways to make a site interactive.

An easy way is to provide e-mail links for department heads and elected officials. Of course, mail that is received must be acknowledged and answered just like phone calls.

Another approach is to use forms to solicit feedback. For example, a simple "Ask the City Manager" form can be placed on his/her page. The advantage to a form is that you may solicit specific information from a visitor such as address, length of residency, or opinions about specific services. You may even want to feature a question of the month on your home page.

I’m often asked whether discussion groups should be hosted on city sites. With few exceptions, the answer is no. Since the purpose of most discussion groups is to allow visitors to "post" a message for others to read or comment on, it unfortunately leads people to say things and use language that has no place on a city web site. Though the desire for "civic dialogue" is noble, cities that start these discussion groups are usually forced to end them to avoid censorship or liability issues.

Functional - Few cities have invested in the advanced capabilities of websites, although few would argue that in time, most city sites will need to do so. Advanced capabilities can include filling out and submitting an electrical permit, paying my water bill, scheduling my son for swim lessons at the municipal pool, checking my neighbor’s home assessment, or downloading an absentee voter ballot form, all from the comfort of my home and well after City Hall has closed for the day.

One reason offered for not making this investment is the number of Internet users do not justify the cost of development. Two things come to mind when I hear this. First, consider charging extra for the services that you offer over the Internet. Many contractors would be delighted to pay extra for a permit if they didn’t have to leave a job site in the middle of the day to run down to city hall.

The second thought is that when all of these services are available from your city’s web site, you will cause your constituents to want to get online. At some point almost everybody (except my mom and dad) will say "I just have to get on the Internet." Improved city services and easier interaction with city officials might just be the reason they do.

Easy to Use - Some cities manage to make it a chore to use their website, while others provide an elegant interface with a thoughtful navigation scheme and amenities. What differentiates these sites?

Consistent Themes - Make every page look the same. When a website uses the same background, text colors, navigation approach and overall layout, visitors don’t have to reorient themselves as they move from page to page on your site.

Navigation - Make sure that users can move quickly back to the home page and from major section to major section with a single click.

Search Capabilities - You may feel that a search engine isn’t necessary when your site starts out at 30 pages. As you incorporate new council minutes, additional service descriptions, the new library program or the latest Parks and Recreation schedule, your site will grow and information will be more difficult to find.

Site Map - A site map gives users a bird’s-eye view of the entire site and helps them to understand the layout.

Horizontal Scrolling - Computer screens are capable of displaying web pages in three main sizes or resolutions (640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 -- for those techies out there). Websites that are inflexibly designed for one of the larger sizes, force the millions still using smaller resolutions to scroll from side to side to see all of the information on your pages. Vertical scrolling -- good. Horizontal scrolling – bad!

The Little Things - There are a dozen small things that can frustrate users. For instance, don’t underline words for emphasis. On the Internet, underlined text is typically a hyperlink. Don’t allow broken links on your site. Eliminate all typos. Tools are available to easily find and eliminate broken links and typos. Ask experienced Internet users around city hall who weren’t involved in the design of the site to review the content for these little annoyances.

Easy to Maintain - Few websites will change as frequently as a dynamic city web site, so maintainability is important. To make a site easy to maintain, both the layout of the pages and physical construction of the site must be considered so that it is easy for non-experts to understand and make changes.

For instance, images should be placed in a single directory using descriptive filenames rather than terse, cryptic filenames. This makes it easier to locate an image that you need to edit or insert on another page in your site.

Also, create an archive folder to keep unused images and pages or "scraps" of pages. You may reuse that content again and don’t want to retype it. Again, use very descriptive file names for these pages.

Expandable - Expansion of the website will be made easier if the layout of pages support it. For example, don’t use fancy buttons to link areas of the site that will expand in the future. If you do, you’ll end up spending too much time making the new graphic buttons. Instead, use simple graphic buttons or just text links. Also, always take detailed notes of how buttons and headers are created such as color, font type and size, and special effects applied to these images. This will save a great deal of time when you add a new section to your site and need to make a new button or header for that page.

Developing your municipal web site is an important step forward in any city’s communication strategy. Make sure that your website displays the seven characteristics of a great website, and you’re certain to be successful.

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