Summit County has redesigned its website, based on input from the public and county staffers. IT director Ron Boyer explains the details.
Boyer said the website was last redesigned in 2014. Last year, they began work on a revamp, working with the firm Civic Plus.
He said they set out to find what citizens are searching for when they come to the website. Boyer discussed one particular priority.
“For the most part, people are coming to our website to look for property information. And so if you’ve looked at it, we have a button right there on the Home Page, called Property Page, and that directs you to everything, mainly our GIS and some of our property records, which is the majority of what people are coming to our website to look for. That’s our No. 1 hit page.”
Another important link, on the left hand side of the page is “Payments.” Citizens can pay online to the county, whether it’s for a dog license, a citation, or the county’s annual trash fee.
Boyer said another useful link is “Create Account."
"What we have, a Notify Me. On our Home Page, you have a news flash. So there’s different categories if you want to be notified about an agenda item, or any type of news going on, or transportation project, you can create an account and put your contact information in there, and then we can notify you when any updates come out. And the other thing with this is, if we have forms online, if you create an account, those will auto-populate based on your account. So it’s meant to ease some of the filling out forms wherever you go into a government agency. So if you create it and we have it online, it can just auto-fill."
He said the original contract with Civic Plus five years ago was for $40,000 and they have since paid $9,000 a year.
Boyer said they also held a contest and a committee selected seven or eight photos of county scenes as backdrops for the website. Winners received a gift card and recognition from the County Council.
