Website upgrade in progress for Lake County forest preserve district

The painstaking process of converting the Lake County Forest Preserve District's website to make it more responsive to modern demands continues.

"It's a work in progress," said Jackie DeMasi, communications specialist with the district. "We're hoping and planning for the end of 2019."

That will be good news for those who access the website on mobile devices, an activity that has increased dramatically in recent years. As configured, mobile users have to keep enlarging website elements to see them, which can be frustrating.

"It will resize (website content) to whatever device the user is on," DeMasi said. The work involves updating 1,500 pages of computer code, she said.

In January, the forest board approved a not-to-exceed contract for $90,000 with AmericanEagle.com of Des Plaines to convert the site to a "responsive" design, which means the appearance will automatically scale to fit the size of the device on which it is viewed.

That conversion of the public website and district intranet also will allow the district to use AmericanEagle's technology in design and other aspects, and eliminate the need for staff members to maintain separate desktop and mobile versions.

"With more public demand and increased use of mobile phones and tablets to make online purchases, our e-commerce pages also would be converted so customers could purchase dog permits, shelter rentals and register for programs from their mobile phones and tablets, which is not possible to do on the current mobile version of our site," according to information presented to the forest district board.

"It's something people are used to and they expect it now," DeMasi said.

The district's website had nearly 1.8 million page views in 2018, according to DeMasi, and the use of mobile devices to see it has jumped dramatically. In 2015, about 57 percent of the page views were on desktops and 43 percent on mobile devices. Last year, that was reversed with about 43 percent desktop views compared with 57 percent mobile.

District officials say research suggests mobile users are impatient with unresponsive websites and may jump off quickly. Also, e-commerce is not possible on the website from a mobile platform.

"We really want people to want to come back to our website," said Sue Hawkins, public affairs manager.