10 Tips for Designing Great City Websites
The Problem
Usability is typically at the top of the list when cities and municipalities list the key success factors for their new website redesign projects. This can prove to be a big challenge, however, since municipalities need to deliver content to a wide array of constituents.
aHa Consulting recommends the below list of 10 key characteristics that City websites should leverage to provide best-in-class usability:
1. Target your major user types: the best websites organize and present information in a way that caters to many different audiences, providing the site visitor a unique and tailored experience. Residents, visitors, business owners, and employees typically represent the primary user profiles for a municipal site. The best municipal websites have one or more pages tailored to each of these
2. Provide specialized views of relevant user content: Unique content for seniors, children, home-based businesses, and commercial businesses are examples of how a municipality might further distinguish and set itself apart from the average website. If parents are interested in finding out about activities for their kids, leverage the dynamic capabilities that a CMS provides to offer parents a consolidated, single-page view of all data related to kids.
3. Make it easy to find content by providing multiple paths: expose and present content to end-users in a targeted way through the combination of intuitive, audience-specific navigational menus, free text search, and dynamically presented content that is driven by relevant content tags and taxonomies. See our article “Providing Multiple Paths to your Website Content Improves Usability” to better understand this issue.
4. Design for the casual user: It is also common for government organizations to have a combination of casual users who only visit the website occasionally as well as power users who use the website on a daily basis. Do not assume your user is a power user. Instead, design for the least common denominator.
5. Design for users with disabilities: compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 is a requirement that must be addressed. It should be incorporated into your internal process and policies as well you’re your web design. A good resource for additional information is the following ADA white paper: Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities
6. Provide your users a consistent design and navigational experience: it is important to provide a common framework and thematic experience across all sections of your website so your users get comfortable moving from one piece of content to the next. Headers, navigational menus, and dynamic content areas should be consistent in both location and visual presentation across your site. It is still quite possible to allow for thematic branding across departments - enabling each department some flexibility - while still maintaining a common user experience across the website.
7. Avoid content overload: the key to a solid, usable website is not the volume of content but rather the quality of content. Another key is incorporating a design that doesn’t put so much content on one page that it confuses and disorients the site visitor.
8. Use images and icons to highlight your content: the selective use of images, photos, and iconography can greatly enhance the visual appeal of your website and often be the difference maker in a visitor’s decision to view (or not view) your content. Good content is more important than a good image, but the combination of both can greatly enhance the user experience.
9. Provide navigational breadcrumbs: Placing ‘breadcrumb’ links on each page allow your site visitors to easily traverse from the page they are viewing all the way back to the home page. Today’s database driven web content management solutions allow for dynamic creation of these breadcrumbs without the risk of broken links.
10. Resist the temptation to over-design: in the end, clean and simple designs usually prove to be the best choice. Special effects often provide a nice distinguishing element to a website, but only when done in moderation. Scrolling headlines, excessive and inconsistent use of HTML markup, and an over-use of Flash technologies often unnecessarily distract a user rather than provide focus to easily find their desired content.
