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Town of Sylvan Lake launches new web site

The Town of Sylvan Lake introduced their new web site on March 29th - coinciding with the opening of the NexSource Centre.
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HOME PAGE - The Town of Sylvan Lake’s new web site new home page was designed directly from feedback from residents.

The Town of Sylvan Lake introduced their new web site on March 29th - coinciding with the opening of the NexSource Centre.

The new web site is a vast improvement over the previous site which was implemented over five years ago, officials say.

“A web site is one of the most usable and great tools that we have as a municipality,” Communications Officer Joanne Gaudet said. “It tends to be a data dump for a lot municipalities and that’s how ours was starting to look considering we haven’t seen an update since 2012.

“Knowing that technology changes daily and seeing a need to improve access to our messaging and information, we budgeted last year a partial budget for the site with the second portion coming for the actual launch in 2017. That is what you see before you.”

The first thing users will notice in the new stream-lined Town web site is how quickly and easy it is to navigate.

“It is super fast,” she said. “We actually hosted our last one in-house. One of our critical needs when we started the project was to have it hosted off-site, while still ensuring our security needs. Most of the companies that were considered were far and away capable of housing a site securely and ensuring our information is protected. The biggest change is the speed and the improved accessibility.”

Ensuring that the new web site was up and running in time for the NexSource Centre opening was critical to Town staff.

“That was my goal,” Gaudet said.

“The former site had no capacity for it without making major changes to how the content was placed. To make such changes, while knowing we had a new site didn’t make any sense. The timing was tight, but it was absolutely important that we launch in advance of the NexSource Centre Opening. It was hectic, but we managed to pull it off.”

She added, “The crossover from the old to the new went easier then we anticipated.”

Town staff have been able to access the site for a little over a month, ensuring that the quality was up to snuff.

“We had access to a beta for a month where staff could go in and make changes and get familiar with the CMS - ensuring that everything was updated,” Gaudet said. “We are working closely the company we chose - which was E-Solutions - so they are on stand-by for few little ticks.”

She added that the only issue that seems slightly consistent is where some emails are not accepted by the system, however she believes that a quick remedy will be found.

“We are confident we will have it near perfection in the next few weeks,” she said.

It was important to Town Council and staff to ensure that Laker feedback was central in the creation of the new web site.

“The home page was directed by a survey back in the fall which asked them what is priority information and what they want to see and why they would come to a municipal site,” Gaudet said. “All that feedback is directly on the home page. It wasn’t based on our opinion, it was ‘an ask’ and we are happy how that is presented on the home page.”

The other key new feature is a fully-functional search function.

“The search tab is a Google search now,” Gaudet explained. “Before you could pretty much guarantee if you searched something you probably won’t get a result, now you will at least get a Google search response.”

The Town will continue to accept feedback on the web site in order to ensure it continues to deliver information to residents effectively.

“We are absolutely taking feedback on the web site, bearing in mind we will not be launching a new one for awhile,” Gaudet said. “We want to make it easy to access and user-friendly.”

She added, “It is a work-in-progress and we hope to implement phase 2 with a few more interactive maps. E-Solutions is a big company and can offer a lot of different features.”

todd.vaughan@sylvanlakenews.ca