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
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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