As you can see, things are very different. Not only do we have a a new website, we have a new logo! We have been working diligently to create a website that was not only beautiful, but significantly easier to navigate. Although our website is live and active, we are still working behind the scenes to continue improvements. You may find a few pages with inactive links or that are under construction. Please continue to check back, as we are actively making changes and adding content daily. Please see the information below for our approach in designing our new website.
Website Design Approach
Old Website Feedback Survey
Recently we asked for our citizens to complete a survey to provide feedback on our previous website.
What we learned from that feedback:
Old Website General Feedback:
- 97% of participants feel that the most important factor of a website is ease of use.
- 63% of participants feel that our old website was NOT a good representation of our City.
- 62% of participants said that if they were considering a visit to Belmont, the old website would NOT encourage them to do so.
- 62% of participants said that the old website did NOT make them feel proud to reside in Belmont.
- 41% of participants were NOT aware that the City performs live broadcasts of Council meetings and posts all Council meeting agendas and minutes online for public access.
- 57% of participants reported that overall, they did NOT like the old website.
Old Website Pros:
- Pretty color scheme
- Nice photos of the community
- Responsive
Old Website Cons:
- Difficult to use.
- Search function doesn’t work.
- Difficult to locate information.
- Department and contact information NOT easily accessible.
- Information is not up to date.
- Does NOT load well or operate properly from a phone or tablet.
Old Website Traffic Statistics
Since 2015, we have seen a 132% increase in mobile and tablet visits per year, accounting for almost 81% of our web traffic in the past year. On average, users were spending less than 2 minutes on our website and visiting a total of 3 different pages before leaving. Of our total visits, we experienced a 60% bounce rate. What is a bounce rate? When a user visits a webpage and leaves without visiting any other pages, that is considered a bounce. What does this bounce rate indicate? Studies show that high bounce rates occur for two main reasons.
These are:
- The website is not pleasant to look at.
- The website does not load properly on the users device, causing it to be difficult to navigate.
Of these causes, given that almost 81% of our website traffic is coming from a phone or tablet and that a majority of our survey submissions reported problems with the website loading on their phone or tablet, we believe our high bounce rate was a result of cause number 2.
Our Response
After reviewing the survey feedback and analyzing our website traffic statistics we determined that we need to focus on the following:
- Mobile and tablet accessibility.
- Welcoming and easy to navigate user experience.
- Easily accessible and convenient information.
- Capture Belmont’s beauty and sense of community.
As you operate our new website and use the convenient button menus, we hope that your experience is a significant improvement over our old hover-and-drop user interface. Each button menu has been designed with different age groups and user devices in mind. We have performed testing on desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones, carefully placing each piece of information and ensuring that it not only looks great, but works effectively no matter how you are accessing it.
Questions or Comments
If you would like to speak with someone about the design, user interface, web service that we are utilizing or problems with the website, please click here to be directed to the proper contact page.