Town conducting website survey before upgrading Town website

by Colin Smith

The Town of Morinville has launched an online survey as part of a redesign of its website.
Council approved the website redesign as a $75,000 capital project for 2019.

The current website was last redesigned in 2014. According to communications coordinator Felicity Bergman, best practices suggest that websites should be refreshed every three to four years.

“It is important that we keep one of our most valuable communication tools up-to-date and accessible for all,” Bergman said.

“We’re experiencing a number of challenges from not only an internal perspective, but also on the public-facing side including, but not limited to, broken links and outdated information, a menu structure that isn’t overly user-friendly, and an extremely lacking search functionality.”

Bergman said the survey is meant to provide insight into the challenges users have been experiencing, how they access their information, what they’re most often looking for and what is important to them.

The 13-question survey can be accessed from the “What’s Happening” section on the home page of the site, www.morinville.ca.

The Town is also seeking people to participate in a website focus group planned for March 21.
“The focus group will be specific to the sitemap development, which is the basis for the homepage,” said Bergman. “For example, what will the main headings be and what should appear on the homepage.”

Another aspect is the compilation of all of the other pages that will found within another website, and a discussion of which heading those pages will eventually fall under.

The focus group is an extremely important step in the website redesign process, and will be most successful with a wide-range of website users participating, Bergman declared.

“The new website will incorporate best practices, allow us to take a step back and really develop a site map that will work for our users, increase user accessibility, and create a much better experience for anyone visiting our website.”

The site is expected to go live in July.

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