Monday Q&A: Turlock IT team worked to make city website citizen-friendly

Except for the big square inviting folks to try its new beta site, the city of Turlock’s longtime website is pretty standard. Each department has its page, and posts information pretty much how it is collected.

Want to see what dogs and cats are available at the pound? Go to City Departments, click on Police Department, then on Field Operations, then on Animal Control, then on “Find a pet to adopt.”

Simple. At least it is for the people who work at City Hall.

For those less familiar with which part of each department does what, the old site can require a virtual quest, clicking into dead ends and backtracking, to find that elusive nugget of information.

Help is on the way, however, in that beta block. Later this month a new site will replace the old, the 18-month endeavor of Senior Information Technology Analyst Carlo Grossman and a team he assembled of boots-on-the-ground members from every city department.

“We have a few department heads, but I wanted the people who work with this every day. They know best what people are asking,” Grossman said Thursday, sitting in front of his oversize screen.

He started in December 2014, asking every department to lay out the types of questions people asked and tasks they could do online, with what was needed to answer the question or solve the problem. From that grid of questions and answers, he and his team organized the new site around what people needed.

Case in point: Finding the perfect four-footed companion takes one click from the main page, one of four always-there links based on top usage. Folks can manage their utility bills, find job listings or check out crime news. That last comes with links to CrimeStopper posts and a handy map to find what’s happening by neighborhood.

Here, Grossman explains how they did it:

Q: What were the priorities for the new site, things you saw that needed to be changed or reorganized?

A: I feel that government sites are too often banner pages for who-we-are and what-we-do type information, and the sites are organized to mimic the organization’s structure. I chose to flatten the entire organization, and instead group information together based on tasks and related information.

For example, all things related to doing business in Turlock are all bundled in a section called Doing Business in Turlock. This section has information about business licenses (handled by Finance), permits for doing business (handled by various departments, including Police, Fire, Municipal Services, Engineering, Planning), information about why you would want to start or move your business to Turlock (handled by Economic Development), and other business-related information.

With this type of organization, you don’t need to first know which department is responsible for the information you are looking for to find it. I created the bar on the right side of each page that shows who to contact for more information.

After researching the analytics of what types of devices our users were accessing our site with, I realized that an almost equal amount of users were accessing our site using mobile devices as there were using desktops. I made it a priority to design the new site to be “responsive,” so that the page elements would shift position and size to fit tablet and cellphone screen sizes.

I also wanted to combine the information we were putting out on social media sites with our new website. This way, the information we post to social media is seen by web visitors who may not be active on social media, or even know that we utilize social media. For those that are using social media, it gives them an opportunity to click to follow us.

Q: How did you arrive at the new look for the site?

A: I studied a lot of nice-looking websites, but the real struggle was how complex a city government site is. For sites like Amazon, people visit the site primarily to buy something, so Amazon can tailor their site to work best for customers looking to buy a product. At the city, we offer such a wide range, from garage sale permits, utility bill payments, plans and information on capital projects, business licenses, crime reporting forms, building permits, just to name a few.

It gets difficult, because you want to cover everything for everybody, but not overwhelm the user with too many options. It’s a balancing act between providing enough options that it’s obvious where to click, but not so many options that it’s too busy.

I also worked to make the content more readable, breaking up large paragraphs into smaller ones, and using bold headers to signify the information below it. I used large borders on links and (formatting) to make them stand out, and also to make it easy to click on mobile devices.

Q: What were some ideas that were not used, or did not work?

A: We are using the same homegrown content management system that we used for our last site. I want to implement a new (system) that gives city staff more control over the website content, but didn’t have time to implement that yet. It’s a project that I’m working on, and once in place, I’ll transition the site to the new system. When that happens, I don’t foresee any changes that the public will notice.

Q: Are there new features you hope to incorporate when available?

A: During the meetings, I presented a few ideas that I will continue to work on, but didn’t fit in the time frame for getting the website out.

One idea is a dashboard that shows the city’s goals, with charts that show our progress on each goal. I used the council’s previous strategic plan document to come up with a number of goals and created a test page, but that document was superseded by the current council’s Policy Goals and Implementation Plan, so I’ll use that document as a resource for ideas on this project. I think the dashboard demonstrates the movement toward an open government, showing interested citizens and business partners what the city is trying to do, and how well we are doing it.

Another idea is to create a list of common homeowner projects that can be viewed without visiting individual city department pages. Things like building a patio, installing a water heater, solar panels and other projects would make up a list. Each city department will have the opportunity to add their information to each project’s page. When this goes live, homeowners will be able to have most of the common questions answered for the project they are looking to do, and the answers will have come from the city departments responsible for providing it.

We’re also looking to enhance the road closure information. Soon, you will be able to see the current road closures on a map. We’ll use the capital project information to show future planned road closures on the same map. This will help motorists in Turlock to plan their routes.

Q: Are there any tips or suggestions you have for users of the new site?

A: I’d say, just keep the feedback coming. We have a link in the top right corner of the site for submitting feedback. I read all messages that come through there, and I consider all suggestions. The goal is to keep working to make the site work best for everyone.

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 5:31 PM with the headline "Monday Q&A: Turlock IT team worked to make city website citizen-friendly."