Digital Hill Awarded Website Redesign for City of Goshen

Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc. has been awarded the contract to redesign the city of Goshen’s website, as mentioned by both the Goshen News and Elkhart Turth. The website redesign will improve many existing features and add new management features enabling the city to continually update and keep items current. Included in the new features are robust calendar functions, City department areas, and new features including a “Report an Issue” button.

Key New Features

The city’s new website will be easier for site visitors, city residents and city employee’s to use. it will use the latest technology and have an improved user interface design. Check out a few of the future features to come!

• Responsive Design
  With the rise of mobile and tablet devices, it’s important to offer a mobile site. The new website will show users a customized view of the website optimized specifically for a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop and size of its screen. Responsive design happens in the programming code. The Website browser will auto-detect the screen size being used, and display the proper design.

• A City Photo Gallery
  The current site does not have a photo gallery to share the Goshen Experience. With the new website redesign, this will be a main navigation tab so both residents and visitors can actually see what it’s like to live, work and have adventures in Goshen!

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
  SEO attempts to improve search engine rankings. In search results, Google displays pages it considers relevant and authoritative, relevance being the most important of the two. Google pulls in search results that are the most relevant based on the keywords typed in by the searcher. Google will favor a responsive website, and rank the city higher in the search results.  The SEO tools will help the city be more visible when residents, potential residents, and visitors try to find important information, when using a search engine, like Google.

• Report An Issue(s) Button
  The “Report An Issue” button will be a huge time saver for city residents and employees. Currently, the only way to report an issue is to call it in. Once the city’s new website is live, residents can go to the website and report a problem, such as a street light outage or city water issue. They’ll fill out a simple online form that will get directed to the proper city employee to make sure the issues gets taken care of promptly.

• Advanced Calender System
  The new advanced calendar system will be a focus point for the city. The calendar will list all meetings of the City Council, Board of Works, Redevelopment Commission, etc. Website visitors will be able to see when meetings are scheduled or if they are canceled/postponed. Site visitors will be able to download PDF’s of meeting agendas and minutes. The functionality of the calendar will make add events and making edits incredibly easy for the website administrator.

• Advanced Website Monitor Controls 
  The advanced website monitor controls are most commonly referred to as a Content Management System or CMS in short. This gives the city the ability to manage and control their site without having to rely on an external company for changes. With the CMS, the city will have the ability to add content, update/make changes to content, add/remove pages, and embed/link to content.

• Online Employment Applications
  Currently, if you want to apply to work for the city of Goshen, your computer must have an Adobe PDF reader. You then fill out the application, save the application to your computer, and email it in. The new online employment application will be a secure form (to protect private information) that once filled out all you have to do is click “submit”. The website takes care of the rest and gets the application to the correct person. This will simplify the city’s website and make Goshen a more desirable place to live, work and play.

These highlighted features are only the tip of the iceberg for new things in store for the city’s website redesign. Many features will be running behind the scenes to help make visiting and using the website a more pleasant experience for residents, visitors, and employees.

Key Issue The New Website Redesign Helps Solve & Long Term Benefits

The city’s existing website is static and requires the knowledge of HTML to make edits or changes. Edits/changes can only be made by a few city employees and from a select number of computers. The new website redesign will expand on those capabilities and give total control to all city employees deemed responsible for maintaining their piece of the site (each department head can control their own department page). This will save the city money because they won’t have to rely on one person or pay a third party company to complete all requested edits/updates. The website redesign will make the web work for the city and bring a central area where information is viewed easily and accessed by the general public and city employees.