After more than a year in the making the Town of Innisfail is launching a new razzle-dazzle website this week.
The new site, created by REaction Marketing, is expected to be live today (May 20) at the same web address (www.innisfail.ca).
Mike Szyszka, owner and creative director of REaction Marketing, said his company's creation, which began construction in early 2013, is a major overhaul of the previous website.
“It is effectively a complete redesign and a total rebuild from the visitor's perspective,” said Szyszka, adding there were advantages working from the old website. “The previous website was built on a platform that was really easy to move from and upgrade. From the back end we were able to utilize a lot of the existing architecture and content that was there which resulted in significant cost savings in the project.”
Town officials said the estimated cost of the website project is just under $20,000.
Szyszka presented the new website to town council at its regular meeting on May 12.
He told council members the project focused on four priority objectives -- design, usability, mobile use optimization, and the site's architecture -- its organization and content.
“For every project those four key areas are always addressed very differently,” said Szyszka. “There are unique challenges when building a website for a municipality, and the types of goals and objectives the site needed to have.
“The end result was customized and specific to what the Town of Innisfail exactly needed.”
As for the new website's content, it's broken out into five sections -- community, businesses, services, visitors and a new one for information, news and articles.
“We did have somewhat of a news section before but it was never really utilized or set up in a user-friendly way, or as a content management sort of way,” said Surina Carloni, the town's marketing and social media coordinator. “The new website is new in the way they are laid out and we can put up our press releases and events and can highlight what is coming up.
“It is a lot easier to find and to find information,” added Carloni of the new design. “It is responsive and you can use on the go or at home sitting on the couch. You can access it anywhere.”
Szyszka said citizens will also quickly notice how the new website will be fully adaptable for mobile use, with each page automatically adjusting to the smaller screen size of cellphones.
“It was basically loading the desktop website on your phone, so you were faced with pinching and zooming in on content,” he said of the previous website. “It was a very cumbersome experience when you have a very small screen, or big fingers using that device. The (new) website knows how big your screen is and delivers the website's content in an experience optimized for that screen size, automatically.”
As for ongoing maintenance and updating, Szyszka said the town has been trained to manage the new website by itself through REaction Marketing's content management system. However, he added the company will be available for long-term support, whether it's for updates or building a new section in the future.
“That is something we really encourage website owners to think about, how to continually improve your presence online and stay with the latest and greatest on what needs to be offered,” said Szyszka.
