Overhaul in the works for West Van’s website
West Vancouver residents are a healthy bunch. The most common search terms on the district’s website are recreation related, followed by “maps,” “careers,” and “zoning.”
Key words like these will help guide the creation of the district’s new website, which is expected to be running by late June.
At a price of $125,000, the designers promise to replace the current out-of-date website with a more user-friendly one.
By allowing West Van residents to test the website, said West Van spokesman Jeff McDonald, it was discovered the new website needs to be organized by subject rather than by groups, like the current tabs for residents, business and visitors.
“Navigation titles should be specific and match real-world terms,” he continued in a report to council on Monday.
“Swimming is very big,” said a spokesman with Open Road, the company in charge of developing the new website. “Citizens are giving signals about the type of phrasing they use here. You notice it came up ‘swimming’ and not ‘aquatics’ which might be how it appears in a district guide.”
The current website has 1,900 pages, but is very “top heavy” with a small number of pages comprising 93 per cent of searches.
A community working group was selected to weed out the most popular pages so they can be found easier.
The end result, said McDonald, will be a logical website that’s “more intuitive to the user.”
mgarstin@northshoreoutlook.com
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