Revamping City of Burnaby's Website: A Citizen-Centric Approach
Technology Category
- Drones - Drone Flight & Navigation Software
- Drones - Flight & Control Systems
Applicable Industries
- Cities & Municipalities
- Telecommunications
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Smart City Operations
- Speech Recognition
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The City of Burnaby is the third most populated urban center in British Columbia, Canada, with over 249,000 citizens. The City is a dynamic, urban community with four vibrant town centers, rapid transit, technology and business centers, major post-secondary institutions and a range of neighborhoods that are served by outstanding parks and recreational facilities and civic amenities. The City of Burnaby website, Burnaby.ca, is considered one of the most important communications channels for citizens, businesses and visitors to learn more about Burnaby and interact with the City. In 2020, the website received more than 1.3 million unique visitors and over 5.7 million page views.
The Challenge
The City of Burnaby, the third most populated urban center in British Columbia, Canada, faced significant challenges with its website, Burnaby.ca. The website, which is a crucial communication channel for the city's over 249,000 citizens, businesses, and visitors, was complex, difficult to navigate, and organization-focused rather than user-focused. The site was filled with outdated and missing content, and its information architecture and page structure were inconsistent and confusing. This led users to abandon the site and seek other means of assistance. The proprietary site CMS was not scalable, and the vendor no longer offered support. The site's responsive design was inflexible, creating less-than-ideal end user experiences, especially on mobile devices. The content was confusing and outdated, and with multiple writers, creating a consistent voice and experience was difficult. The site was neither inclusive nor accessible to users with disabilities. On-site hosting created business continuity issues, especially at times when communication would be most critical to residents. Unorganized digital assets led to wasted time searching for assets, using outdated assets and completely losing assets.
The Solution
The City of Burnaby decided to shift its focus to the resident/customer experience for the development of the new website. The goal was to move away from departmental silos and create unity through a consistently executed brand visual identity and voice. The City’s Website Insights Team (WIT), composed of 32 staff members from across departments, worked together with subject matter experts to review and develop website content. The City’s in-house writing team worked directly with the subject matter experts in rewriting and editing the content in the City's new brand voice. Website development partner Domain 7 conducted experience mapping discussions, building a better understanding of the user journeys. They used Acquia DAM to compile digital assets from across all City departments into a cohesive platform, creating a central repository. The marketing team now has more control over assets, ensuring they are current, easy to find, and that the City has the rights to use them. The City site is now hosted on Acquia Cloud, providing confidence that their core communications tool will work even during a natural disaster.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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