EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) -- After months in development, the city of Eugene is launching a brand new look online with a new city website that will launch tomorrow.
The city of Eugene’s new website has been in development for at least a year and a half, costing more about 175,000 in dedicate city telecommunications funding.
Friday, June 1st, 2012, the city’s new website will go live and city staff is hoping that it will be much easier for residents to use.
A Kansas company called “CivicPlus” designed the website, primarily with a hope of simplification. Much of the design principles came from opinions about the old website, submitted by Eugene residents in a web survey conducted in early 2011.
One of the biggest changes users will notice is navigation. The most popular sections take a spotlight on the front page, including city news, big events and council information.
If you’re looking for other departments of services, there are several different ways to find it, whether its using a search engine, a drop down menu titled “I want to,” or clicking the department’s link.
Overall, the city hopes the new site will allow people to find and report things on their own, saving residents’ time and also saving the city some money.
"The staff can focus their time on those things, service provisions, that is not so readily accessible through the web. So we're very hopeful that the improvements of this nature, and quite convinced, is a very good cost savings for the city in order to provide the level of service we do and information for the citizens in a cost effective manner,” says Johnny Medlin, project manager of the website redesign.
Another big thing with the new website will be social network integration and newsletters. Once everything is up and running, the city will have a condensed page where you can sign up for department newsletters and find a directory of all of the city's Facebook and Twitter websites.
All of the website’s roughly 1,500 pages should be changed over to the new format by Monday, June 4th, 2012.
