2011 UBCM Community Excellence Awards
/ 2011 COMMUNITY EXCELLENCE AWARDSCategory Worksheet
BEST PRACTICES, Website
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Name of Local Government: Village of Telkwa
Project/Program Title: Website Development & Upgrades
Website Address: http://www.telkwa.com/
Project Summary Paragraph
Please provide a summary of your project/program in 150 words or less.
Preceding 2009 the Village of Telkwa had a static website and we were unable to keep current without costly and time consuming requests to our website company. The Village of Telkwa’s past website did not rank well with Google and we noticed that our website was not being used by residents nor was government referring to it. In March 2009, the Village of Telkwa put out a request for proposal to redesign and restructure our website. Our goal was to make telkwa.com a key component of the Village’s communications with residents, visitors, stakeholders and businesses.
Project Analysis
Please answer the question in 300 words or less in 11 pt Arial font (our judges value directness and brevity). If you experience difficulty answering a particular question, consider the aspects of your program that may relate to the question and show us how they are linked.
1. PURPOSE
a. If this was a pre-existing website, list the basic changes implemented. If this is a new website, tell us why you created it.
Our pre-existing website did not feature our municipal logo, did not run on valid code and was not updated by village staff.
Our new website was changed to meet the following specifications:
VALID CODE: The new website uses standards-compliant, valid XHTML and CSS coding that renders correctly in all common browsers.
CMS FOR EASY STAFF-UPDATES: The new website runs on a user-friendly, expandable Content Management System that allows in-house addition/editing of text and photos and uploading of PDF documents.
BRANDING & DESIGN: The new website makes use of our newly designed TELKWA logo and has a clean, professional graphic design with an emphasis on usability and accessibility.
The new Village of Telkwa website acts as our main online presence for a variety of target audiences – residents, visitors, businesses and potential economic investors.
b. How did you determine what your priorities were?
We needed to be able to communicate to our village residents, businesses, visitors and potential investors our latest news, activities and achievements. We researched Telkwa’s demographics and looked at the technology (internet speed) available to our residents. We planned our website to account for advances in technology so the website will always stay current.
c. On average, how often is your website updated?
Almost daily. We are now able to access and update from anywhere anytime.
2. CONCEPT
What do you want your website to accomplish?
We aimed to improve our communication and streamline our updating processes. We wanted to give Telkwa recognition as its own unique, attractive and active Village.
We knew the updated website would prove to be our new method for staying current and in touch with our community.
3. EFFECTIVENESS
How is the website more efficient and/or effective than it was before? If this is a new site, explain what old processes for disseminating information or doing business you improved upon.
The old site was getting next to no traffic as it was not updated and was a static site. With the new site, launch in November 2009, we saw an instant rise in traffic of up to 352%!
Since then traffic has been steadily rising due to ongoing marketing of the website and our enewsletter. For example, using google analytics, we can compare the period from the launch date of January-July 2010 to the same period January-July 2011 we see a 34% increase in visitors and an 11% increase in pageviews.
Through the integration of social media, our top referring site that links to us is Facebook. We included a Facebook and Twitter link on our enewsletters that we send out monthly. We have 130 followers on facebook and gaining followers on twitter. This is very successful given that cell phone reception has only recently become consistently available throughout the village.
Our website traffic stats through Google Analytics shows our top 10 pages are:
1. home
2. photo-gallery/
3. business-directory/
4. village-office/bylaws/
5. village-office/
6. telkwa-history/
7. community-newsletter/
8. news-notices/
9. photo-gallery
10. visit/travel-services/
4. ACCOUNTABILITY
How has this program/project improved upon accountability to the community's citizens?
Greatly! We post bylaws, new stories, emergency alerts, enewsletters, share images of events and have added a new OCP section to keep people informed about our OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN Process.
5. AWARENESS
How has this program/project created more awareness in the community about local government actions?
We send out community enewsletters and have noticed a steady rise in website traffic since the date we launched it in 2009. At the end of our 1st year we had reached an average of 1000 visits/month. In the 1st 6 months of our 2nd year we are now at an average of 1600 visits/month.
6. INNOVATION
What makes your website innovative and creative? And/or what made your process innovative and creative?
The look and feel of the website is very identifiable to Telkwa. Old barn boards and the blue colour choice harmonizes the website with the river that has become part of our new branding. Telkwa’s motto is “where rivers meet and friends gather” and the website attributes to this atmosphere. For a small village of 1400 residents we now have a great tool to communicate and interact with our constituents as well as tourists and businesses. We had to put a lot of creativity into how we designed our website to cater to so many audiences with a very small budget.
7. SUSTAINABILITY
What measures have you put in place to ensure the continued operation of this initiative? (e.g. staff time, resources, financial)
The website maintenance through the CMS is easy to use and updates are very quick. We make updates ourselves, this eliminates the web designer and reduces our expenses. It also eliminates the frustration of having to depend on a web designer to make simple content updates for us.
The website CMS is easy to learn so any staff member can do it. We have web HELP manuals to refer to. Our only firm costs are about $120-$150 for domain and hosting per year. We keep an annual budget for ‘upgrades’ that may be required or desired over time (enews, photo galleries, social media, or CMS software upgrades).
8. BEST PRACTICES
What sets this program/project apart as a winning idea? Why should it be considered a best practice, in comparison to other similar programs?
Our new website is a BIG website for a SMALL village. We are proud that it professionally represents our village and northern BC. It caters to a lot of differing needs in a pleasing and easy to use format. Our new website links us to our residents in a real time way and fulfills one of the goals in our Integrated Sustainability Plan in providing enewsletters and reducing paper newsletter waste. It is now easier for tourists to access information about our village and our region.
In addition, we made sure our new website made sense for our staff who would be updating the site and our users. It now meets the following specifications:
VALID CODE: The new website uses standards-compliant, valid XHTML and CSS coding that renders correctly in all common browsers.
CMS FOR EASY STAFF-UPDATES: The new website runs on a user-friendly, expandable Content Management System that allows in-house addition/editing of text and photos and uploading of PDF documents.
BRANDING & DESIGN: The new website makes use of our new TELKWA logo and has a clean, professional graphic design with an emphasis on usability and accessibility
9. KNOWLEDGE SHARING
What helpful advice would you share with other communities looking to embark on a similar project?
Keep the website simple in design. Form a knowledgeable committee and match them with a great web company with experience in the area. Try to understand all the technological options. Look at websites and find features that you like. Talk to other municipalities about what website features work and what they’d do differently. Get a demonstration of the Content Management Systems’s being proposed.
10. TELL US MORE
Please share any other information you think may help us better understand your submission.
We are proud of our website traffic and we’ve attached in the appendix some handy Google Analytics report graphics to show our increased use.
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