City’s public website gets extreme makeover
The City of Minneapolis website has received a major facelift. Beginning Monday, Dec. 19, visitors to www.MinneapolisMN.gov will see a more dynamic website with a better design that is easier to navigate and more accessible for people with disabilities. Behind the scenes, the website redesign will also help City staff work more efficiently because of a streamlined process to update content on the web.
The redesign process has been a significant undertaking for the City of Minneapolis and is the culmination of almost two years of work, first with a redesign of the City’s Intranet and now the public website. Approximately 13,000 pages, 50,000 documents and 160,000 links have been converted to the new website format. There are many highlights to the redesign including:
- www.MinneapolisMN.gov is now more accessible for people with disabilities and those who speak other languages. The new site complies with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act Guidelines, utilizes Google Translate, and allows for adjustable text size for people with low vision
- A cleaner layout with better use of white space and more photos
- More options to highlight popular content and special programs
- New menu at the top of each page with drop down navigation and more options to choose from
- A list of all departments at the top of every web page
- More consistent left-side navigation
- Increased presence of 311, City Council and Mayor’s office on the homepage
- Better promotion of City jobs, Minneapolis 79, social media, email subscriptions and language resources
- Breadcrumbs that show where you are on the site
- Home → Public Works → Sidewalks
Visitors to the new website will notice that the redesign has changed the web addresses to many of the City’s web pages. Web addresses to department homepages like www.minneapolismn.gov/311 and pages like www.minneapolismn.gov/snow remain the same, but many others will change. Users will want to visit the City’s website, find the pages they’re looking for, and update their bookmarks.
Published Dec. 17, 2011