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Frederick, CO Redesigns Government Website for its Evolving Community

Keys to Project:

CMS, Mobile Responsiveness

City:

Frederick, CO

Population:

12,154

Products:

Frederick, Colorado is a tight-knit community situated on the beautiful front range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. This historically small town is growing rapidly, adding approximately 1,000 new residents to its community each year. This growth is redefining Frederick’s citizen demographic, producing a population with wide-ranging needs and expectations for its civic leaders. The community is now comprised of citizens with generations of family ties to the town, as well as young families who have newly migrated to Frederick due to the affordable, upscale lifestyle that residence in the town affords.

Case-Study-Frederick_Colorado_CIvicEngage

According to Cindy Kamigaki, Enterprise Technology Systems (ETS) Manager at the Town of Frederick, the town’s proximity to both Fort Collins and Denver has made it an appealing home to many of its new residents.

“We have many young families who are moving here because of the lifestyle Frederick can provide to them,” said Kamigaki. “Frederick is affordable, conveniently located, and we have a great school system. We also have citizens who have lived here their whole lives, whose parents and grandparents lived here in Frederick, and who have strong ties to our mining history.”

The forward-thinking vision of the government leaders at Frederick, Colorado is to bridge the gap between the two demographics—the longstanding citizens and the new additions—and bring solutions that make every resident truly feel at home within the town. To help accomplish its evolving goals, Frederick’s website administration team turned to its civic engagement partners at CivicPlus to help it redesign its CivicEngage website and implement updates that would further meet the needs of its evolving citizen population.

Before CivicEngage

Frederick, Colorado first transitioned to CivicEngage in 2012. According to Kamigaki, the goal of the initial transition was to migrate to an easily manageable, and flexible website content management system (CMS), and to design a website that reflected the unique culture of Frederick.

frederick-colorado-before

“Our previous website was very hard to use on the backend,” said Kamigaki. “And it didn’t reflect our community. The first time we redesigned with CivicPlus we were so happy with the style that the team brought to the graphic design of our site. The new site truly reflected who we are as a community.”

The CivicEngage Redesign

In January of 2016, the Town of Frederick worked with CivicPlus to redesign its website as part of its commitment to its citizens to continually evolve the website as the community and its needs evolved and changed.

“The main focus for the redesign was to make our website mobile friendly. The data analytics we received from our CivicPlus account manager proved that about half of our citizens were accessing our website from their mobile phones, and we wanted them to have a positive experience using the site no matter where they are in our community.”

– Cindy Kamigaki, ETS Manager, Frederick, Colorado

After the CivicEngage Redesign

While the goal of Frederick’s redesign was primarily to mobile optimize the website, the administrative team benefitted from the migration to CivicEngage’s latest platform, which offers even more customization capabilities managed through its intuitive administrative interface.

“The new site is so customizable. Now we can easily update the homepage’s background photos to promote the latest happenings. The background photos are the main element of our new graphic design and allow us to celebrate events, promote new programs, reflect what is going on in our community, and truly make our website a reflection of our town”

– Megan Williams, Community Relations Manager, Frederick, CO

Civic_Website_Redesign_Frederick_CO-Gallery-Desktop-iPad

Kamigaki and Megan Williams, Community Relations Manager at the Town of Frederick, are also now taking advantage of the CivicEngage Spotlight module to highlight specific topics of community interest and share weekly and monthly updates. According to Williams, the spotlight features have been well received by citizens.

“They’ve allowed us to dig deep into the topics that are important to our citizens and put them right on the front page of our website.”

Civic_Website_Redesign-Frederick-CO_Spotlight-Feature

Goals for the CivicEngage Redesign

  • Optimize the website for mobile
  • Highlight community topics of interest to citizens
  • Provide easy access to citizen educational content
  • Ensure website is intuitive so citizens can self-service many of their own needs

Top engagement tools:

  • Spotlight module
  • Homepage imagery
  • Submit a Request module

Top administrative tools:

  • Live edit

“All of the feedback that we have received from our citizens so far has been positive. Our residents are enjoying the new features, and because the site is so easy to update, we’re able to keep content fresh, which is a huge reason why we receive so many compliments. Our citizens now tell us that our website is intuitive. The number of citizen walk-ins we receive has gone down, which proves to us that our citizens are able to find the information they need online.”

– Megan Williams, Community Relations Manager, Frederick, CO

As it continues to leverage the tools available from its CivicEngage website to meet the evolving needs of its evolving citizen population, the administrative team at Frederick, Colorado is looking to keep one thing constant–it’s partnership with CivicPlus.

“The functionality for the price, I don’t think is matched anywhere else,” said Kamigaki. “Our CivicPlus account manager is fabulous. We continue to be impressed by the level of customer service we continue to receive. It’s that personalized customer service that keeps us partnering with CivicPlus. Even if another company could match CivicPlus in price, it’s the service and relationship we’ve built that keeps us a continual CivicPlus customer.”

 


Top Engagement Tools:

  • Spotlight module – Frederick, Colorado now manages three spotlight features on the homepage of its website, which include a weekly construction update to keep citizens informed about progress on roads and infrastructure as the town continues to recover from a 2013 flood; a development blog that is written monthly by a town planner that keeps citizens informed about new building development; and a spotlight called “From the Desk of Detective Dave,” which is written by a Frederick detective and is used to share safety tips.
  • Homepage background images – Frederick, Colorado administrators update the primary background image photos on their website regularly to keep the homepage engaging, as well as to communicate important news and information about upcoming events and local news.
  • Submit a Request module – This citizen engagement tool demonstrates transparency, and acts as a convenient service resolution workflow tool. Frederick’s administrators use the tool to accept service requests from citizens, assign the tasks to the appropriate departments, and follow each request through to resolution to ensure the citizen’s needs are met.

“I know other municipalities that use a separate CRM system to track citizen requests. For us, the functionality is built right in to our CivicEngage website. What I continue to tell people is that we love working with CivicPlus because you receive so much functionality for the price.”

– Cindy Kamigaki, ETS Manager, Frederick, CO


 Top Time-Saving Administrative Site Tools

  • Live Edit – The administrative team in Frederick uses the Live Edit site tool feature to make small updates to site content quickly. When team members request updates to individual pages, the website administrators easily log-in to the CivicEngage administrative tool and make the requested change immediately, saving time and speeding the resolution of requested updates.

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