Greene County
Digital Strategy, Custom Website Design & Development
Greene County, PA is a rural county south of Pittsburgh. Residents describe it as a county where people pass you on the street and call you by name. When Greene County officials approached our team about overhauling their county website, we couldn’t wait to get started.
Project Challenge
The biggest challenge with county websites is the sheer volume of content. How do you organize all of the information for residents, businesses, employees, and tourists when each demographic has such different needs? Residents were not able to find resources, documentation and contact information when they needed it, and they often resorted to calling the county with repetitive questions. Greene County admin found it difficult to update the hard-coded website, and outdated information was confusing site visitors and deterring returning visits. With dozens of department and office admin teams potentially updating the website, Greene County knew they needed a secure, flexible content management system to meet their needs.
Our Solution
Our team overhauled the information architecture with intuitive menus, prioritized a simplified website search function, and incorporated new databases to pull information into several sections of the website to reduce website management time and ensure all content is up to date and consistent. Flexible templates accommodate a wide range of content and enable Green County to achieve unique looks for different pages while still maintaining a cohesive, branded feel throughout the site. The final website is modern, flexible, and mobile friendly.
From the Client
"I like the [CMS] for its reliability, simplicity, robust features, flexibility, and how it integrates into my Microsoft server environment. I have a lot of vendors – I have very few partners. I consider Blue Archer a partner. When there is an issue, we don’t get “that’s not our fault, check your stuff first then call us” – we get the issue fixed and then we figure out what went wrong later." - Scott Kelly, Chief Financial Officer
Information Architecture
Beginning with a comprehensive strategy phase with key stake-holders including County Commissioners, we reviewed and established the unique content needs of website personas. Next, we overhauled the information architecture into intuitive menus. Government and Department mega menus enable visitors to efficiently skim page lists to determine which section of the website best fits their needs.
The introduction of the How Do I? menu uses frequently asked questions to help guide individuals to key resources and content throughout the website. One of the most important findings of the strategy phase was the understanding that county website users frame their needs and their prospective solutions differently. With that knowledge, we constructed the information architecture in a way that ensured there were always multiple ways for users to get to the same information.
Design
For any county website, it’s important to keep the design minimal and prioritize intuitive content paths. Greene County emphasized that the design did not need to be overly flashy; it needed to thoughtfully communicate resources, documents, contact information, and more. Neutral grays and whites offset the powerful, branded green color from the logo and ensure the user’s attention is focused on important text content throughout the site. Fortunately, Greene County has some incredible landscapes, so our team was able to highlight farmlands, lush greenery, and historic buildings. Our designers rounded out the design with images of the community residents living and working in Greene County.
Strategic Databases
Much of the contact and resource data residents and employees search for on the site would be housed in the department and services menu. Our developers built the module to include an overview of each department, office address and directions, contact information, and related news and events feed. Each content section of the template integrated with appropriate content databases throughout the site. We carried over the design and functionality of the departments module into the municipality and boards modules to help manage Greene County’s budget.
Additional Functionality
In addition to the many databases integrated throughout the website, our team also built a custom website search, employee directory listing and login, alert bar, and more. In order to better understand how users explore the homepage, our marketing team set up custom tracking using Google Tag Manager to help analyze button clicks on the homepage.
Conclusion
Blue Archer and Greene County are currently working through Phase 2 of the project, and look forward to making iterative improvements and enhancements to the website and functionality over time.
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