Politics & Government
Town Web Site Spruced Up
New Canaan's official online portal gets a new design and added functionality.
If you've visited the town Web site in the last month, you may have noticed its new look. There's now a rotating 14-picture gallery of New Canaan landmarks on the home page, and an antique map of the town serves as the background for the welcome message. The Darien Blue Wave color palette has been replaced with Ram red. Three years after the Information Technology Department took over the site, which was started by members of the Senior Men's s Club, it was due for a face-lift and other upgrades to make the site more user-friendly.
A new bolder top navigation allows visitors to jump to the each section of the site and adds a link to the public schools' Web site suggested by Selectman Rob Mallozzi.
Visitors no longer have to scroll to find the latest news, upcoming public meetings which are now in "above the fold" columns on the home page.
Webmaster Sal DeLucia, who oversaw the redesign, gathered input from all the department heads about what to include in the "How Do I?" links to frequently asked questions and "Quick Links" to online services (also now above the fold) in order to help cut down on walk-ins at town offices.
The Departments page now has a map showing where offices for town departments are. "The first week it was up, someone came in and told me that saved him a trip," said IT Director Chris Kaiser. The town engineers are also planning to use the new mapping tool to point out the town's parks and which town buildings are handicap accessible.
The menu of forms and permits has been streamlined into a drop-down browser. Starting in January, archives of public meeting agendas and minutes more than a year old will also be accessible through a drop-down.
Kaiser says previous efforts to make the site more useful have already driven traffic, with a jump each time a new online service has been added. When the IT Department first took over, residents could only pay parking tickets and taxes online; users can now check their property appraisal, find out when the building inspector is scheduled to arrive, register for paddle tennis courts and recreation programs, and more. The site now has 14,000 visits a year and growing—that number represents an 8.6 percent increase since last year.
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