A change is not only as good as a rest — it’s also a new beginning that promises a positive result for everyone involved.
Such is the case with the City of Kawartha Lakes’ brand new municipal website at www.kawarthalakes.ca, which just launched today (August 1).
The new website is more user-friendly with added features for both residents and visitors. It’s also now mobile responsive — so it can be easily read on your smartphone or tablet — and is fully accessible for people with visual or auditory disabilities.
“It was time,” says Cheri Davidson, Manager of Communications, Advertising and Marketing for the City of Kawartha Lakes, “Council chose to invest in upgrading our online presence so we can better serve our residents, while also reaching out to others we want to draw to Kawartha Lakes in a way that showcases all we have to offer.”
Rather than having internal staff design the website as in the past, the City made sure to consult with users from the public.
“It’s been created by users to be user friendly,” Davidson explains. “The first thing we did was a public survey in 2016. We asked what people liked and what they didn’t like about our website, and what they would like to see on a new site.”
But the research process didn’t stop there. A series of nine public focus groups followed, as well as site mapping sessions where members of the public and City staff offer suggestions for the section headings and menus as well as the pages featured under each.
“We asked ‘Is this where you would go to find these things or would you look somewhere else?’ We spent a lot of time up front on what people want to see and where they are going to look for it.”
Part of the redesign process included making sure the content on the website is focused on what people actually need.
“We’ve taken the old thousand page website and gone through every single page’s content,” Davidson says. “Each division has been active in gathering the most relevant and accurate content for the public so that it’s easy to find and they’re getting what they need.”
The technology behind the new website is supplied by Waterloo-based eSolutions Group, a company that specializes in digital solutions for public sector clients.
Besides its greatly improved usability and mobile responsiveness, Davidson says the new website is now fully accessible for people with disabilities — a key feature mandated by legislation for new public sector websites,
“We invested the resources required to have a platform that’s accessible,” she says. “You can enlarge every web page and you can browse aloud. It’s built to be fully accessible and compliant with WCAG 2.0 Level AA specifications, the highest standard on the web.”
Davidson explains the improved usability and the requirement for accessibility means that fewer documents are available for download from the new website.
“We’ve culled the content based on what people said they need and also, if it’s not accessible, it’s not going online.”
However, Davidson notes that if people are looking for a particular document that isn’t available for download from the website, they can still contact the municipality to request it. More documents are being converted into an accessible format and posted every day.
The new website includes several new and improved customer service features, including a feedback form where citizens can report an issue to the municipality.
“We had a basic procedure where you email customer service, but now you can fill out a form that has the top 10 seasonal issues. If you’ve got a pothole you want to report, you click the box, and tell us where the pothole is. When you submit the form, you get a tracking number.
“Things are more streamlined. Your issue goes to the right division right away. It’s smarter customer service.”
The website also includes an improved way to search for municipal by-laws.
“It was a headache for people to find by-laws because they were buried in PDFs,” Davidson says. “Now you can search by keyword for the by-law you’re looking for.”
If launching a new municipal website isn’t enough, Kawartha Lakes Tourism has also redesigned and launched its website at www.explorekawarthalakes.com.
“We’ve incorporated things that locals will also use, such as listings of where our beaches are and all our major festivals,” Davidson explains. “The events calendar is robust and you can submit your own tourism event to it.”
City residents keen to stay on top of things can subscribe to receive news sent directly to their email inbox. Better still, one can subscribe to receive updates in areas of their choosing, such as road closures.
Those who subscribe before October 15, 2017 will qualify to win a Samsung tablet courtesy of Bell World, corner of Kent and Albert Streets in Lindsay.
The websites were made possible through a grant from the Kawartha Lakes Community Futures Development Corporation under the Eastern Ontario Development Program’s Community Innovation stream.
