Hamilton.ca Website Redesign
Consultation has concluded
The City of Hamilton website is a key communications tool that provides a variety of information about programs, services and operations to its citizens, businesses and other stakeholders.
The current Hamilton.ca launched in 2015 and has seen an average of 15 million page views a year and an increase in users from 1.5 to 3.4 million in the same time period.
Our requirements for a website have since evolved and City staff are launching a consultation process to uncover user motivations and needs for 2021 and beyond. The feedback gathered through public engagement opportunities will provide staff with valuable insight into what’s working, not working and ensuring any updates and redevelopment work that is done meets the needs of our residents and stakeholders.
City staff will advance hamilton.ca by focusing on delivering valuable content, an efficient CMS and a commitment to an improved user experience. We are estimating it will take until the end of 2021 to complete this project.
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Please share examples of your favorite government websites and functionality with us and tell us what you like about them (include site/page URL and municipality name)
View All Ideasover 3 years ago
Example of excellent website
This webpage from Guelph region is user-friendly and very easy to navigate, search and read information; visually appealing too https://www.wdgpublichealth.ca/
over 3 years ago
More Visual, Colourful, Artistic, and Vibrant Looking Site
The current site is entirely text based and modern elegant websites utilize more art, pictures, and graphics. It's no secret that a symbol is instantly recognized by the public - that's why we use them for signs, construction, warning labels etc. Let's apply that logic to our site. MORE PICTURES, ICONS, and COLOUR. Our home page should be a mosaic of beautiful Hamilton landmarks, public spaces, and (MOST OF ALL) people! We also have a pool of incredible artistic talent to consult with to make the site not just functional and informative but visually stunning. Let's try to bring their creative minds on board to help us provide information to our residents in fun, colourful, and creative ways. Below are three examples of extraordinary websites: 1. The first is TAOS, NEW MEXICO. Surely a tourist focused site, but just appreciate for a moment the colours and culture being showcased. It is inviting, exciting, and makes the town seem like a destination worth visiting! Surely we can adopt some of that. https://taos.org/ 2. The second is MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. The overall site isn't the nicest, but the homepage is the part to appreciate. It is highly visual (a large background at the top and icons representing city services immediately below), it is short but searchable, and note the top level menus which are neatly categorized and expand into larger menus. The upper right "Browse by Department" is neat too. https://www.cityofmillvalley.org/default.htm 3. The third is PLAYWORLD.COM. Although this is a commercial site, the City website should incorporate a few aspects of commercial sites too. Note the images of people (in this case children as the company is for adventures and activities for kids). When I say the site should be more visual that doesn't just mean images of buildings and parks - faces and people are what will really make the website more appealing to people! This site also does a wonderful job of breaking up the text with graphics, colours, interactive images, etc. https://playworld.com/
over 3 years ago
Five Key Points
I have five key points I'd like the city to focus on when considering the redesign of the hamilton.ca site: The new site should be - 1) designed in Hamilton 2) built to facilitate and encourage Open Data 3) usable by people of all age groups (accessibility for seniors and for young people looking to become engaged with their city) 4) able to provide quick French, Somali, Tagalog, Spanish, and Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ (Cayuga) translations 5) adaptable, searchable, and responsive A made-in-Hamilton site that prioritizes Open Data is absolutely crucial. As a doctoral candidate and researcher, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to navigate municipal websites to collect data. Municipalities are important levels of government and the information on their websites should be easily searchable, downloadable, and accessible. Citizen science and research is incredibly important and we should be doing everything we can to encourage and promote that.
over 3 years ago
Status of Reports and Items
You desperately need to provide the public with tools for each legislative item so that reports, debate, motions, committee reports, the eventual by-laws and all the other legislative matters related to them are all contained together so that the public can monitor the status of what they are interested in. Currently navigating this requires third-party searches (that the City deliberately breaks and makes useless) and a lot of patience and there is still much that is missed. So, for example, when we are interested in sidewalk snow clearing, there needs to be a way of easily finding ten years' worth of reports, debates, committee resolutions, and all the rest. This is not hard to do!
over 3 years ago
Site should be searchable
Make it searchable! The site should be actually, fully searchable by keyword, with search-within-search function, and that actually searches the contents of the actual documents. Preferably in a way that when, say, you search "Council Code of Conduct" that you return the real document as top hit? (The current one not old versions). This is but one of a thousand examples!
Who's Listening
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Email bonnie.large@hamilton.ca
