Whitewater has a new municipal website, available at http://www.ci.whitewater.wi.us/. There are both strengths and weaknesses to the site, as with any site, but I’ll start with what’s appealing about the site, and offer a few suggestions thereafter.
The new website displays a clean, attractive look. It’s a more polished, business-standard website than the previous version. Surfers who visit lots of sites will find this website appealing; it looks like the websites of many major corporations and organizations. (Gone, thankfully, is the Comic Sans font used on the old website, a font unsuitable for a city website, but great for a child’s party invitation.)
There is a good deal of information available – contacts, department organizational charts, publications, etc. It takes time to put up that much information, but it now seems to be linked through the new website. The site has links to departments, government meetings, a citizen request center, and the local municipal code, among other features.
I have three quick, easy suggestions:
Disclaimers. One of the most unusual aspects of the new website is the overly-prominent use of disclaimers on the main page. I am not opposed to disclaimers, but their presence on so much of the main page is unexpected, unnecessary, and unfriendly.
Of the words on the main page of the city’s website, 382 involve disclaimers, terms, conditions, etc. By contrast, the city manager’s message of introduction is only 216 words long.
I wrote that this was unexpected. It certainly is. Consider the links, immediately below, to other municipal websites, in Wisconsin, and across the nation. Not one of them has as prominent — as obtrusive — a disclaimer as we do.
City of Fort Atkinson
City of Jefferson
City of Elkhorn
City of Janesville
City of Milwaukeee
City of Madison
City of La Crosse
City of Chicago
City of Minneapolis
City of Houston
City of Boston
It’s unnecessary that our city’s disclaimers should take up so much space; not one of the other municipalities’ sites to which I have linked feels a similar need. Those other cities place the disclaimers, terms, etc. under a single hyperlink (typically “Terms and Conditions, etc.”) to a secondary page. We are at no greater risk than the clever and serious people who run all these other cities. There’s no reason to believe that they are all wrong about their understated display of disclaimers, and that we are right about our obtrusive display.
The overly-prominent disclaimers on our website are unfriendly, and reveal a skittish, defensive, standoffish view of the world. We should be more open and welcoming to visitors to our site. Our first words should not include so many words of caution.
Consider a man on a date with an attractive woman. Having talked with her many times, and after taking her out for dinner and a movie, he takes her back to her apartment. There, on her front steps, he has the occasion to kiss her goodnight. He surmises, correctly, that she would welcome a kiss. What should he do? He might, of course, reach out, tilt her chin ever so slightly, and kiss her as the end of a wonderful evening.
What if, by contrast, as she waited for his touch, he instead produced a detailed document for her review, enumerating the terms, conditions, and disclaimers to govern any future affection between them?
We will not turn visitors into residents by an overly-prominent use of disclaimers, conditions of use, and terms and conditions. Let’s be friendly and welcoming, and place those full passages on another page, accessible through a hyperlink.
Translations. We have a fair number of Spanish speaking residents in our community. Some municipal websites place a link on their pages, where English can be translated into Spanish automatically. Among those city webpages is the one for the City of Minneapolis. (Using a different translation program from Google’s.)
I have a link like this on FREE WHITEWATER, too. You’ll find it in the right hand sidebar, with links to Spanish (and French!), for automatic translations of pages that I have written in English. The link uses the translation tools from the fine people at Google, Inc. Anyone can use a tool like that, so why shouldn’t Whitewater? The city’s webpages would be in English, but could be translated by the click of a button into other languages for those who wanted vital city information in another language. Only the people who wanted another language would see the page in that other language. (I know – and you know – that it won’t always be a completely accurate translation. The best is the enemy of the good; if you’re waiting cautiously for perfection, afraid of any venture that’s not sanitized and wholly antiseptic, you’ll accomplish nothing.)
Some want to trumpet outreach efforts – here’s an easy way to make good on those promises.
Calendar. How about a calendar on the main page with a listing of upcoming public meetings? It’s easy to do – there’s one on this website. A reader could select a day, and on that day, could see what public meetings are taking place, when and where. (I have listed ones that interest me on my site, but someone could add a comprehensive listing on the city’s website.)
Over at the FREE WHITEWATER Design Labs™, these features have already been deployed. (The Design Labs are, by way of description, located in my office, and have a staff of one: yours truly.) This site has permanent links, photos, a reader mail feature, ‘email-this-post’ links, an archive, translation tools, and an events calendar.
I’m not – of course — really the designer of any of these tools; they’re freely available as open source programs for use on websites anywhere. All that I have done is add them to the FREE WHITEWATER site, and tweaked a bit of code to make them work. The City of Whitewater, and lots of people in town, could easily do far better than I have done.
Why not try some of these suggestions?