PITTSBORO — Pittsboro has a new website to facilitate smoother community engagement and match town representatives’ commitment to modernization and development.
The new platform represents a complete overhaul of the town’s previous site, which had a stripped-down aesthetic and sometimes clunky usability. Now the website — which the town developed in partnership with CivicPlus, an integrated technology solutions consultancy for local governments — features an attractive user interface, improved navigational options and the back end capacity to accommodate heightened usage and functionality as the town grows.
“We worked with the team to kind of not just revise, but completely redo the website,” said Town Manager Chris Kennedy. “Visually we wanted to be more appealing. And a high priority was that the website is ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. That’s really important for a modern website, that it has accessibility to all users.”
Other improvements include a new sign-in option where users can customize notifications alerting them to different town events and activities, and a mobile-friendly template.
“That was really important to us as we go into a new era of Pittsboro in many ways,” Kennedy said. “A modernization of our operation is being able to get information out there to the public in a convenient manner for them ... The screen and content adapt based on your device, so if you’re on a desktop versus a laptop versus an iPad versus a cell phone it all basically calibrates to the device you’re on to help you have the best user experience.”
Though largely hidden from the public eye, website improvement has been one of Kennedy’s most important projects since assuming the town manager’s role almost a year ago.
“When I interviewed last year, this was a really big priority of the board,” he said, “They said that the town website needs improvement and we want to make sure something gets done. And so one of the tasks that I was charged with in year one of my tenure here with the town was revamping the town website.”
The result rolled out Monday, but website development is ongoing. Residents might notice some hiccups while staff smooth out the kinks, Kennedy said. And while the site’s aesthetic has changed dramatically, content remains largely the same for now.
“We’re excited that we have a new website, but there’s a big asterisk that we still have to fix the content,” Kennedy said. “So, if people get frustrated immediately because the content leaves something to be desired, know that we’re working on that too. Right now it’s just the same content carried over from the previous website; they just migrated the information to the new one. So we appreciate people’s patience as they try to navigate the new site when they’re used to the old one, and we’re hoping to improve the quality of the content as we go along.”
The website update cost about $16,000 and will likely cost $4,500 each year moving forward, according to Kennedy. But the new site could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in town money if it can supplant the need for new staffers.
“I think it’s a really understated big deal that this is changing because it’s such a big difference,” Kennedy said. “Having a well run website is like having probably half a dozen staff people, because you can just really get the information out there that you need and people don’t get bogged down in a bunch of clicks. They can find it readily.”
The URL for Pittsboro’s website, pittsboronc.gov has not changed, and Kennedy hopes the transition will be painless even for longtime users. He encourages anyone with further questions to call his office at 919-542-4621.
“We want consistent branding across town and easy access,” he said. “I think that really makes a big difference. This is really kind of the first step of a new energy of the Town of Pittsboro.”
Reporter D. Lars Dolder can be reached at dldolder@chathamnr.com and on Twitter @dldolder.