2016.01.26 WS Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Of BRrnKATrON the city that works for you Council Worksession January 26, 2016 5:00 pm Present: Mayor Valerie Johnson Councilmember Gina Bauman Councilmember Brian Strub Councilmember Paul Jacobsen Councilmember Mary Burg Absent: Staff in Attendance: Dean Lotter Guests in Attendance: Michelle Wheeler 12ebranding Presentation and Discussion Lotter introduced Michelle Wheeler to the Council. He explained Ms. Wheeler was an individual that could assist the City with its website and perhaps a City logo rebranding. Michelle Wheeler thanked the Council for their time and explained she was a New Brighton native. She provided the Council with a presentation on how she could assist the City in improving its website. A history of how websites have evolved over the past two decades was reviewed. She discussed the commonalities in "gov office" website designs. She encouraged the City to move away from this model and move towards a Word Press option. Ms. Wheeler wanted the City's new website to be user friendly, have prominent search engine capabilities, and have website analytics, in addition to having a positive public perception. She provided further comment on the importance of each of these goals and objectives, in addition to how they would benefit the City. She reviewed several modern websites that she had designed noting they were focused around user experience. She encouraged the City to have their website to be integrated with social media while also remaining user friendly given the median age of New Brighton residents. Ms. Wheeler commented on the website development process and believed the City could eliminate their hosting fees. She discussed the site mapping process, overall site design and training that would be provided to staff. It was her hope that a new responsive website would increase traffic and improve visits to the City's website. She encouraged the Council to cater its website to a wide variety of clientele and varying age groups. She suggested the City create a website that would be organized around the user. She believed this would be accomplished by creating a thorough site map through discussions with each City department. She anticipated each department would have a liaison to the website, in addition to Terri and Andre being able to add and amend content. Lotter explained that Terri was skilled at Word Press already and anticipated that Andre would pick it up quickly. This would allow City staff to make changes to the website without requiring Ms. Wheeler to remain on contract with the City in perpetuity. He discussed how Ms. Wheeler would assist the City in setting up the basic structure and flow of the website. After the website was created, the City could review the analytics and make adjustments where necessary to meet the needs of the end users.