New City Website Offers Additional Features and Responsive Design

Keeping up with the ways its customers are doing business, and providing a superior online experience is a priority at the City of West Chicago. Over the past year the City has taken notice of the increase in the use of portable devices, and came to the conclusion that its website, www.westchicago.org, needed an overhaul to accommodate this trend.

Built in 2006 prior to the Smart phone and tablet revolution, the former website's graphic and text-heavy pages were not designed with conversion flexibility over a range of devices. When viewed on a phone or tablet, the result was sometimes skewed graphics, off-set text and misplaced links. Enter "Responsive Web Design", the newest way to build a website with compatibility features that permit automatic resizing so that whether viewed on a computer monitor, laptop screen, or the face of a hand-held portable device, the resulting screen shot is consistently accurate.

The City also used this opportunity to update graphics and streamline navigation so that the visual presentation of the website better reflects user preferences for crisp, concise displays of content and easy to follow links to interior pages. Additional features of the new website design include:

•A live Twitter feed on the homepage.

•Intuitive navigation that organizes content by type of customer (e.g. resident or business).

•Two new online services for the Police Department (Overnight Parking and LexisNexis for accident reporting).

•Additional homepage buttons for easy access to some of the most frequently clicked pages.

•An interactive map on the City Council page to help residents locate their elected representative.

•A dedicated, user-friendly Transparency Portal.

"Staying relevant in a world of constant change is challenging at best, but when that change is needed to provide our customers with exceptional service, it becomes a necessity", said City of West Chicago Marketing and Communications Coordinator Rosemary Mackey. "We hope our citizens, businesses and visitors will explore our new website, www.westchicago.org, often and come to rely on it as a primary source of City information".