I’m not alone in the quest for Gov2.0 – friendly government websites, so I would like to ask the government web community for input and ideas on enhancements to Reno.gov. Please comment below with your suggestions and input!
Background
See how the City of Reno, Nevada website has changed over the years below.
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 2009 to present day |
Process & limitations
Considering my web budget has been slashed to $73 through July 2011 (I’m serious), I will have to work with accumulated maintenance hours with my contracted vendor. Certain layout & graphic changes are doable, but I can’t reinvent the wheel on my budget. I will do a basic wireframe for webpage layout, then use their expertise to massage the graphic design.
Reno.gov enhancement ideas
So here are my initial thoughts. I’m also requesting input from our internal Web Committee.
- Optimize for 1024×768 screen resolution. Reno.gov is optimized for 800×600 (currently less than 4% of our site visitors).
- The most important menu, “Self-Service”, is located ‘below the fold’. The service menu needs to have the most prominent location on the page.
- Add our social media links. This is becoming standard for gov sites. Reno has tons of fans and followers on our social sites – imagine how many more we’ll draw in with links on our homepage.
- Reduce size of rotating photo. Great for a gov site that receives a huge # of outside visits from potential tourists, but takes up a lot of prime real-estate. Also difficult to take photos that work well within this size.
- Introduce ‘Live Chat’ link somewhere on the homepage for this new service. Must be in header to appear on all interior pages as well.
- Simplify navigation. We’ve currently got header links, main nav links, graphic links, left sidebar graphic/text links, and footer links.
- Love the Reno skyline graphic, but it’s dated and needs to be updated. A better angle will show our downtown as a more vibrant city center.
- The new wv.gov and texas.gov websites place a big emphasis on Search. Possibly make search tool more prominent? Must be located in header to appear on all interior pages as well.
- Standardize fonts to sans-serif & update main header text from “Reno, Nevada” to Reno.gov to promote our new URL.
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Seems you’re talking ‘what to do’ before ‘why to do it’? What would be the benefit of “optimising for 1024×768′ that puts it at the top of your list?
Thanks for commenting! The reason behind this priority is that most of our site visitors now use 1024×768 resolution. A very small percentage are still on 800×600.
Like you, Kristy, we’re targeting the 1024 move as one of our top changes. Reason? We gain 200 pixels of additional usable space, allowing us to more effectively arrange the layout of our front page and bring items above the fold.
What about putting the government contact info in the top third, instead of only the footer? See the City of Boulder, Colorado website. Seems like a no-brainer, but not all government websites do this. (We’re currently not)
Kristy:
I think the problem with promoting physical contact info is that you’re defeating the very nature of a government website. You don’t *want* them calling you or coming down. You want them using the site- so taking up valuable real estate with a feature you don’t want them using seems counterintuitive to me.
It’s probably more valuable to focus on mobile site and application design. Then you’re actually providing a new product to the public. I’d say the ROI on a homepage redesign is pretty low. The homepage is a terrible place to introduce a new feature, as it’s already overwhelming with options.
Nonetheless, rather than looking at the home page, look at your landing pages and see if there is any way you can make them work better for your citizens. Maybe limiting choices and moving dynamic content from the static site to blogs and using feeds is in order?
Chris, you bring up an interesting point about the nature of government websites, and I think it’s an important discussion for all web managers.
My thought is that we don’t necessarily want to deter citizens from contacting us in ways other than the web, especially since Reno has a call center open 10 hours a day.
PEW Internet research from April 2010 supports the importance of phone contact:
It seems to me that a government website should connect citizens with anything they need – including how to contact us over the phone and in person. I think those who want to call us will be happier with our customer service if we make it easier for them.
Paul, thanks for your comments. Reno.gov does have a mobile site, multiple RSS feeds and a news blog. I should mention that our homepage is actually substantially more visited than any other landing page. One of our challenges is that our links are ugly (i.e. http://www.reno.gov/Index.aspx?page=718). We can’t create pretty links (i.e. http://www.reno.gov/weather) in our CMS, so we have to go through our vendor to DNS the URLs every time we need a prettier link. One coping method is to promote Reno.gov on our publications and make all services available via a Self-Service menu on the homepage. It is challenging when we have so many services competing for homepage coverage. I hope to address this in the new design.
Kristy:
Problem is that if you make physical contact information the most prominent form of contact, you are encouraging folks to use that medium. And traditional contact (phone and in-person) has a much higher per-interaction cost (like 5 to 10 times the cost) than a web-based interaction.