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LTC 021-2018 Launch of the City's New WebsiteAl I AM I B EAC H City of Miami Beach, 1700 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach, Florida 33139, www.miamibeachfl.aov LTC # 021-2018 LETTER TO COMMISSION To: Mayor Dan Gelber and Members f the Cit Commission From: Jimmy L. Morales, City Manag Date: January 16, 2018 Subject: Launch of the City's new Web =ite The purpose of this LTC is to update the Mayor and City Commission on the status and launch of the City's new website. Backqround The Administration issued RFP 2015 -163 -LR to seek the proposals from qualified firms to update the City's website with a new design that represents the prestige of our vibrant City and to replace the existing proprietary website Content Management System (CMS) with a non-proprietary open source CMS. In July of 2015, the Evaluation Committee appointed by the City Manager convened to consider the responsive proposals received. The Committee was instructed to score and rank the proposals received pursuant to the evaluation criteria established in the RFP. The results of the evaluation committee process were presented to the City Manager for his recommendation to the City Commission. After reviewing the submission and the Evaluation Committee's rankings of proposals received, the City Manager noted that Solodev received the greatest number of first place votes of all Proposers. Solodev is an internet software and website development company in Florida and, at that time, had been in business for nine years. It had implemented content management systems for both public and private sector clients. Solodev proposed WordPress as the open source content management system for this project. The City successfully negotiated an agreement with Solodev, and work on the new website design and implementation began in 2016. At the May 17, 2017, Commission Meeting, the Commission reviewed and unanimously approved the new bold design template for the website (Item R9 AG). Content creation and migration continued using the Commission approved design template. All City departments took an active role building their relevant portions of the website. During the data migration phase of the implementation, one of the main goals was to organize the website content into an intuitive and easier to navigate format. One of the innovative new tools used to achieve this goal is the three-step query tool prominently located on the front page. This tool gives visitors to our new site the ability to build a simple sentence, using our custom labels, to describe what they want to do. Upon doing so, they click on a button, and that action takes them directly to the page that they were looking for, without having to travel through numerous pages like our current website Letter to Commission New Website Launch Page 2 of 2 forces you to do so. The labels used in this tool are fully customizable, and will continue to improve as the City receives feedback and expands its service offerings. If you wish to travel throughout the website in the traditional manner, the content is now more intuitively sorted in groups that appear as clearly labeled portals across the top navigation menu. Using analytics and page view statistics from the old website, we were able to eliminate countless pages of content that were never accessed and thus added no relevant value. Another main goal of the design was that the content and layout of the information be up- to-date and easily viewed across a multitude of mobile devices. The new website achieves this with its state-of-the-art use of a the layout that is actually aware of the visual size of the browser the user is using. The website dynamically reorganizes the tiles to the optimal fit and function regardless of whether it is being viewed on a mobile device or a desktop computer. Even resizing the browser window on a desktop computer will trigger the optimization of the the layout. Status After many months of creative innovation and fine-tuning, the City's new website is finally ready for launch. The launch date for the new website is January 18, 2018. In the most recent phase of development, a select focus group of public users reviewed the new site and provided their valuable input for consideration. This panel of users had access to the fully functional new website for a few weeks and they used it as if it was live. Their feedback was incorporated to further refine and improve the overall functionality of the website in order to make the launch a success. As always, the City understands that anytime you move forward and embrace new technology and design, there will be those that were more comfortable with what we had before. For those users, the City is training the customer service representatives at the City's Customer Service Center to assist users that need help with the new website. The number to the Customer Service Center is also featured right on the front page of the new website, 305 -604 -CITY (2489). The new website is truly a modern, streamlined and efficient representation of our vibrant City. On Thursday, January 18, 2018, the new website will be officially launched and will automatically appear in place of our current website when all users visit www.miamibeachfl.gov. JLM/MT/AS