The Harrison Town Council approved a request to upgrade and redesign the town’s municipal website on Thursday, May 19.
The upgrade, proposed by Harrison Town Clerk Jackie Greer, will cost $3000, which the town will pay in three equal payments over three years to its current web provider, Virtual Towns and Schools, to revamp the website.
“The cost is minimal compared to the time it saves employees,” Greer said of the town’s online presence. “It saves tons of cost for every department, because people look at the website. The information is there. People don’t have to call.”
The new website will feature responsive web design, which detects the device of the user—mobile, tablet, desktop or laptop—and adapts the webpage accordingly for the device, a feature that few municipal websites have utilized, according to Millard Rose, president of Virtual Towns and Schools.
The company has its resources ready to commence the project, Rose said, adding that development times vary based on a municipality’s specific needs, but most last approximately eight weeks. Greer expects the website to be ready this fall.
This redesign will be Harrison’s third municipal website iteration. The first was created 10 years ago, and the second upgrade, built by Virtual Town and Schools, was facilitated by Greer in October 2012.
“We’re going on five years,” Greer said. “Five years, in that world, is a long time. So, there’s new upgrades; there’s new things available.”
The second, current generation provides users with information on the municipality’s annual budgets, board meeting agendas and minutes, a frequently asked questions page and the town code.
This information will remain in the website’s third generation, but it will be easier to navigate. The developer will adapt global navigation and cascading navigation, or drop-down menus, to the new website. These features allow users to access the website’s side and top navigation bars from any location on the current page.
“Navigation is structured so that the visitors can get to lots of landing pages all in one click from the home page,” Rose said. “It’s a much better user experience.”
Virtual Towns and Schools operates out of Massachusetts and develops websites for more than 15 Westchester County municipalities and 500 clients overall. The company creates custom designs specific to each municipality, according to its own website.
Harrison’s website, since enlisting Virtual Towns and Schools in 2012, has received 474,000 hits and more than 1 million individual page views, according to Greer.
“I just want to keep putting all the information on there,” Greer said. “As far as the new website design, this will be the most up-to-date version that we can have.”
