Bentonville's Website Revamped, App To Come

BENTONVILLE -- Visitors to the city's website probably have noticed some changes.

There's less information on the initial screen, giving it a cleaner appearance, and the reorganization of information and links makes it more user friendly, members of the city's website team said Friday.

At A Glance

New Website

Check out Bentonville’s new website at www.bentonvillear.c…. City web team members encourage residents to offer feedback about the site. If there is an issue or correction that needs to be made, residents should contact the department as department heads now have the ability to change and update their pages.

Source: Staff Report

For the past year about 10 city officials worked with Mass Enthusiasm to revamp the website and develop a smartphone application that will allow residents to report power outages and department heads to send out push notifications.

The new website launched Feb. 25.

Every website should have a purpose, said Andrew Sever, web developer at Mass Enthusiasm. The purpose of Bentonville's site is to serve citizens as a good utility, he said.

The most-visited sections of the old site are now large links on the top right corner of the new site. They are: About Bentonville, Parks and Recreation, Employment, Public Safety and Utilities.

"We extracted those highest visited parts of the site and put them right in the front so it's very easy to use," Sever said.

Also, information that used to be on the right rail is now under the Residents and Business links at the top of the site. There is also a search capability that wasn't on the previous site, said Jonathan Rogers, information technology manager.

The new site will also allow city departments to update and modify information more readily, Rogers said. It used to be that if something was to be changed, it was sent to the information technology department, who would then update the website, he said.

"It was a collateral duty for one of my technicians or myself to try to maintain along with our normal business," Rogers said.

The new site "allows the departments to get the information to citizens that much quicker," said David Wright, Parks and Recreation director.

Rogers and Wright are on the website team, as is Travis Matlock, engineering director in the Electrical Utility Department.

Mass Enthusiasm also developed a smartphone application that will largely be used by the Utility Department as well as other city departments.

The biggest push for the application was for residents to be able to report a power outage quickly and also allow the Utility Department to send out push notifications during large outages, Matlock said.

There are 20 phone lines available to report emergency outages, he said.

"If 1,000 people are out, number 450 is not going to get his outage recorded," Matlock said.

Residents can report power outages now by calling the Utility Department during business hours, by using a 800 number after hours or on the city's website.

The application will function similar to the website's power outage link, but will be more user-friendly, Matlock said.

"That's how I want people to report their outages," he said. "It's faster, it's quicker, you don't have to deal with calling people. I've called the 800 number to report my own power outage and it's 'it is what it is,' it's a process."

Any city department head will also be able to send push notifications to notify residents when city offices will be closed, trash pickup will be delayed or when activities will happen, the web team members said.

"We don't want to use it too much to where people would get annoyed by it," Matlock said. "But we want to be able to have the ability to get messages out there fast."

Eventually, application users will be able to choose which departments they want to receive notifications from through the application instead of the phone settings, Rogers said. That will be an adjustment made after the application has been used, he said.

The application is still being tested, but is scheduled for release in the near future, officials said. It will be free and available through the Apple App Store.

The website package, which included several services, cost $13,500, Rogers said. The application was a separate contract and cost about $15,000, Matlock said.

NW News on 03/08/2014

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