Clients & Case Studies
New CMS for the City of Surrey Increases User Satisfaction
External Web Solutions: City of Surrey
The Business Need
The previous City of Surrey website had grown to support hundreds of pages, a constant stream of traffic, and over 15 authoring areas. The City's site faced the problem many large sites do: publishing bottlenecks and outdated content. The user interface was tired and the information architecture no longer supported their communication and information needs.
The City of Surrey wanted a new site that would address all of these issues. In addition, the new site needed to allow City employees to perform site maintenance and develop new templates to accommodate future content requirements. So, the City partnered with Habañero to leverage both our experience designing usable websites and our experience implementing Microsoft Content Management Server 2001 (MSCMS).
The Solution
During the first part of the project Habañero facilitated a process that allowed all of the website committee members, the Surrey City Council, and even a few IT people to have input and achieve consensus about the look and feel of the new site. The resulting user interface and information architecture was then validated with real users through usability testing.
Next, using an iterative development process and MSCMS best practices, Habañero developed templates to support the new design, and held numerous formal and informal training sessions for City employees.
The Results
Content authors and approvers are ecstatic about their ability to publish information to the website in a timely manner, noting that site content is now fresh and more relevant. More importantly, website visitors frequently comment that the site is easy to use and information easy to find.
Brian Edwards, Habañero Senior Solution Architect states, "It was exciting to leverage our experience with MSCMS on a large website. With over 15 business areas updating hundreds of pages, utilizing a product such as MSCMS is a significant step for the City of Surrey's website, and a perfect use of the tool."