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New website improves usability and customer service

A major website re-development by Optimation and design partner Hairy Lemon has seen Porirua City Council’s (PCC) public website soar to the top of the league table for local government websites.

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Porirua City Council

Public Sector: Web-enabled business

While Porirua City Council (PCC) is by no means the largest or wealthiest of New Zealand's local councils, the improvements Optimation helped the council make to its website saw it awarded third place out of 85 councils in the 2009 ALGIM Web Symposium, beaten only by Auckland City and Northland. In 2010, Porirua City Council did even better, taking out the number one spot overall.

The results have been a big jump from PCC's 23rd place in 2008, and website manager Dale Hartle says it was largely due to the changes Optimation made to the site's structure, architecture, functionality and ease-of-use.

Business goals

  • Make it simple and quick for people to access both high level and detailed information on council services
  • Enable council staff and managers to easily edit and publish new content, including long documents, in a variety of formats
  • Create a platform that will support more complex online transactions, including rates payments and filing of consent applications and LIM requests
  • Improve Porirua City Council's ALGIM website ranking
  • Reduce the load on the council's call centre by allowing people to complete a variety of common tasks using smart online forms

We delivered

  • An attractive and highly functional website
  • Design and navigation flexibility
  • The ability for the council's web team to make simple changes to the site's structure and look-and-feel without the need for specialist expertise
  • A modern website architecture that can be readily adapted as requirements change
  • Advanced content workflow and publishing functionality
  • Full compliance with government web standards and guidelines

Why Optimation

PCC has had a website since 1996, but Dale explains that until the Optimation re-development, the site was quite static in terms of both design and navigation. When an independent 2008 assessment of the site concluded significant improvements could be made to usability, access and compliance with e-government standards, a project was kicked off for a complete re-development. The redevelopment has given the council's web team the level of design and navigation flexibility that was required to meet current needs and to enable the site to be easily adapted to future requirements.

A key benefit from the new site has been reducing the load on the council's customer service team while simultaneously providing better, faster responses to the public.

"Businesses and residents are now using the site much more to get immediate access to the information they need on council services. That is increasing the website's value because at the same time, we are having to deal with fewer phone calls and emails asking for information."

Optimation continues to work with PCC to extend and enhance the site, with the next major task being to enable online credit card payments for things like rates, parking fines and dog registrations.

Visit the Porirua City Council website.