This topic contains 102 replies, has 28 voices, and was last updated by 
Steve Ressler 8 years, 9 months ago.
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Call me vain, but whenever I visit a website its appearance will pretty much dictate whether or not I give it any credibility. A good website says a lot of the organization’s professionalism, attention to detail and understanding of their target audience. There are some terrible .gov sites out there. There are also some good ones. My personal favorite is the Federal IT Dashboard. Weather.gov ranks up there as the worst.
What websites do you nominate as the best and worst?
Perhaps it’s a blessing Obama is moving to eliminate 50% of .gov sites. -
usmint.gov is pretty bad
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You’re not kidding.
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I do like weather.gov’s redesign though:
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This redesign just come out recently? That looks pretty good, actually.
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Can anyone give us some examples of great websites? I’m responsible for maintaining our website and I’d love to see any good examples. Thank you.
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Funny this topic is posted today. A colleague and I needed to find information on GSA’s Public Building Service website today and it was incredibly difficult, not to say anything about appearance (which could probably also use some work). Although I did find what I was looking for, it took me about 25 minutes. Had I not needed the information, I would have given up long before then.
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You’re not kidding — that’s tough one to navigate.
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What are the integral criteria — other than appearance — that make for a “great” Government web site?
DBG
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Beyond appearance, I’d say general usability and organization. Although my question only stated appearance. Should have elaborated a bit perhaps.
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Hands down, the worst is Time.gov. I mean, it’s awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwful.
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What do you all think of SBA’s website?
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WORST http://fedstats.gov/ This website is ugly and the layout is beyond basic. I wouldn’t trust any federal stats from this website.
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BEST http://utah.gov/index.html This website is my personal favorite. The website is well designed, clean, simple, easy to navigate, and organized. There’s a clear visibility on how to connect to the social media. The navigation bar at the top is visible and easy to find. What could seem like one more government site full of information that’s hard to read, utah.gov becomes a manageable, eye-appealing website that organizes all its information in a user-friendly way. This site gets an A in design for me!
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Oh my gosh. You might be right.
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The appearance is good, but I always find it hard to find the information that I’m seeking on SBA’s site.
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Oh wow. 1997 called and wants its website back.
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This is a great site!!!
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Very cool looking website. It looks more like the website of a tech startup than a state government.
Edit: And that’s a compliment, of course!
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My state’s .gov website, Arkansas.gov, was named #1 state web portal in the nation by the Center for Digital Government in its 2011 Best of Web awards!
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Funny you say that, Chris. Reorganization/streamlining of the architecture and additional plain language enhancements are under way!
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Bing hasn’t sued them?
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That’s true – it does look like Bing.
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That’s a great site. State governments have the beat on federal!
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You also complimented Utah’s website. Vanessa can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Utah’s website won top honors in the Best of Web awards in 2010.
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I feel the worst government site is in the AKO, which is the ALMS training. It is user unfriendly, it takes forever, it constantly crashes, it loses files and you have to retake course which already take forever to complete due to the slowest of the system. I dread whenever I have to take a class in there…
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You’ve got that backwards, I think. I believe Bing stole the concept from Utah.
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I want to be able to go to a website find what I want and leave. I don’t want to be searching for forms or information. If it is something that the public uses regularly then have it as a link that goes directly to the form or information.
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PA’s government portal is atrocious, but the PA State DOT (PennDot) is very user friendly.
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Awesome…
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I don’t hate USA.gov…I generally find what I need or get a good idea of where I need to go next using it. Look and feel is a bit dry but if functions well enough. http://www.usa.gov/
I actually use HowTo.gov quite a bit for work information… it is a great resource.
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@Cliff cook you’re right. the utah.gov website was redesigned before Bing in 2011. Utah.gov won awards for being the best designed government website in 2011 and has continued to win design awards throughout the years. Here’s this for proof. http://www.utah.gov/awards.html
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I tend to like sites with very little on the homepage (I know why I am there, so please don’t give me your mission statement or the latest speech from a elected official). I also tend to run from sites that have the same featured items, month after month – year after year – give me what is new and current. If you are local government, tell me what’s happening in the local area, not whats happening in government.
And keep the pictures & icons to a minumum. 1 big picture is nice, 15 pictuers and 30 little icons, may be more then I care to look at or will even try and figure out what they are about. (One of them might have been important, but if you have 30 plus items that you’ve deemed important items, they all become unimportant to me)
A Couple of Inspirational Government Sites (to me)
Places that don’t try to be everything to everybody on the homepage.http://www.calgary.ca/SitePages/cocis/default.aspx (alot like the Utah site, with search as the key)
http://www.georgia.gov (kept it simple. not as pretty as utah or calgary, but still is search focused)
http://www.weho.org/ (very colourful! great small site)
I might be a little harsh, but I (and I believe most people, who’s job is not working with government) want to spend as little time as possible on a government website, that has nothing but government.
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The redesign has been a work in progress for over a year. The new design (http://preview.weather.gov/) was posted for public comment (after several rounds of usability tests) in late Spring of this year. The site is scheduled to go live in early July. In association with the redesign of weather.gov, the mobile site has also undergone a major redesign (preview.weather.gov/mobile). It also is scheduled to go live in early July.
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The utah.gov website won awards in 2010 but also for their current website redesign in 2011. They won the 2011 Communicator Award of Distinction as the best government website, the 2011 Public Technology Institute Web 2.0 State and Local Government award winner, the 2011 Best of State Award as the Best Web-based Community Resource and other awards as well. @Janet wilson here’s a link of all their awards. http://www.utah.gov/awards.html
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More money should be spent on the web site instead of Vegas partying!
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Last updated in 2007? Yea, that should be taken down if it hasn’t been updated in five years.
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Nice that it looks cool but… This is the site that suffered a major data Breach, Would offer that the Tech Director for the state of Utah would have rathered the site not look so cool
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Hello – this one is a Canadian government site (province of B.C. Student Financial Aid). It’s also responsive – try it out on your mobile device http://www.studentaidbc.ca
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I also like this one a lot. (might be a bit heavy on social icons as a focal point)
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Wow! Nice. Too bad GovLoop doesn’t have a ‘Like’ button. I definitely would have clicked ‘Like’.
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Totally biased, but I love http://consumerfinance.gov
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For…?
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I complimented the Administrator of the Village of Bayside, Wisconsin the other day on their website and he said that he felt way behind the times. Maybe, but their website is well organized and user friendly. They even have a live chat option! http://www.bayside-wi.gov/
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What don’t you like about it? Hard to find info?
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I’m from Pennsylvania (originally)! I’m disheartened. It is pretty bad.
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@Gayle: what’s the link to the site?
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Never heard of HowTo.gov. It actually is pretty useful!
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Great comments, Chris. I think your preferences are good usability guidelines in general.
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The way the info is structured and the site flow is actually pretty good.
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I like this site! Responsive, too, which is great.
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I like this site. Thanks for sharing. I like the long page format.
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@Chris: Yea, too much social icon spam.
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What makes a good website is nothing more than what makes for a good speech, consider your audience and be brief. Work from the general to the specific. The biggest mistake web builders make is letting someone build it themselves. They may know everything about what they do but no one else in the world thinks like they do. It would be like designing and building your own house without an architect and contractor, a disaster.
Assume your audience knows little to nothing about you or your business. Have a third party, not familiar with your business, beta test the site and give feed back. Lastly, looks are important but they are not everything. Sacrifice appearance for content or function every time.
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So, if I provided our link, would you be willing to give me some constructive feedback on our website? Thank you.
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I think that’s great advice — assume your audience knows little about you. “Don’t make me think.”
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Absolutely. Post the link and we’ll give some constructive feedback.
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Howto.gov looks terrific! I’ve already enrolled in a webinar for responsive website design. Thank you for sharing!
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There’s a lot of good info on the site, but seems like it would be a bit challenging for someone new coming to the site to find what he/she is looking for.
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DC.gov is in the midst of a very long redesign process… First stage was a move to Vignette/OpenText (home page). There were issues of scale, so now it’s being moved to Drupal.
During this process, the appearance of distinct agency sites is therefore very inconsistent. http://mayor.dc.gov/ shows the new design.
Re PDFs, I’ve come to appreciate their archival quality. I understand your concerns though.
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After looking at a lot of the well designed government websites, there’s a common thread and focus on the search engine. A lot of the government websites have lots of information so the search engine has been an important feature to help people find what they are looking for. If this is an important feature on your website, I would make that more obvious. Making the search engine bigger and clearing up all the other information that’s around it would make it more prominent and easier to navigate. All the information that’s on the home page can be filled elsewhere on other pages within the website.
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Very nice…
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My county just got a refresh this week – http://www.hillsboroughcounty.org/
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Love the feedback from both you and Chris. Thank you much for your time. I’m right on it! 🙂
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Good luck!
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As a career counselor focused on helping recent grads secure federal jobs, I’m a big fan of Careers.state.gov If only all gov’t websites were as helpful and transparent. Almost anything a job seeker could ever want to know is there – from videos to chat message boards.
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Not too bad, actually. I like it.
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Marie, I like this site as well. Thanks for pointing it out.
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This is the best i have seen…
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This is a great post…IM in the process of redoing our site in the upcoming budget year….we need work. http://www.eastpointcity.org
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James, I really like this site. Did you design it yourself? Maybe you could share a few design principles with us.
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Got this from another thread elsewhere but I agree –Austin, Texas has one of the best city websites I’ve ever seen. http://austintexas.gov/. Compare it to one of the worst, LA’s (http://www.lacity.org/)
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Austin gets my vote!
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I love Utah’s website, http://utah.gov! 1) They have large, beautiful photos that make me actually want to visit Utah. 2) They have a huge search bar. We get so many complaints about our city website from people who can’f find what they’re looking for, even though we have built in search redundancies. 3) One of its features is it trends what others are searching for.We’re in the middle of starting the redesign discussion, so the timing of this couldn’t be more perfect!
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I was at City of Joplin for a hackathon and this was the chosen redesign for city website which I think is pretty good (built on top of CivicPlus framework – http://www.joplinmo.org/)
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I’d be happy to provide feedback as you redesign. In fact, open it up for discussion to the entire GovLoop community. You’ll get great input.
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Great post here on how the government should clean up the .gov mess:
https://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/get-out-your-pitchforks-and-clean-up-that-content-1
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Would offer that maybe the city of Austin Texas would maybe categorized as one of the best: http://www.austintexas.gov/
IMO one of the more professionally done sites…
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I agree, Henry. It’s fantastic. In my top 5.
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mn.gov relaunched today – thoughts?
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RI.gov looking good
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After perusing the 8 pages of comments and replies, and focusing specifically on municipal websites, I took note of Calgary, West Hollywood, Hillsborough County, East Point, Austin, Joplin, and Bayside as the best of the best. I noticed many were created with the CivicPlus template.
One of the sites included a footer note that it was designed and hosted by Vision Internet, a company I never heard of before, and their website pointed me to dozens of clients including Tempe, San Marcos, and Dunedin. I really like the *fun* aspect of Dunedin.
This leads to two questions:
First: Would you add any other cities or towns to the above list as standing out above others — especially if they are smaller communities with less dedicated resources and not much money to begin? Here in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where I am a city councilor, our website is ancient. It’s reminiscent of Los Angeles though not as bad. This is why I like Dunedin, West Hollywood, and Calgary for providing a glimpse into the community’s ambience without even visiting it in person.
Second: How can a community with limited resources get this done? I believe the people want change. I believe city officials want change. But the city isn’t asking residents for advice. Frustrating the matter is we have a 1-person IT department who is overworked and not up to speed on egov practices. (He really likes Michigan‘s website, for instance, which I think is ugly and cluttered and not civic-friendly compared to Utah and Minnesota and Rhode Island. But I digress.)
Thoughts?
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On your second question, Steve Ressler may be able to help answer. he participated in a local city hack over a weekend that drew support from the community to crank out a website.
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Any hopes of a student intern coming in and redesigning your website? It’s a great bullet point for their resume!
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That’s a great idea!
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A college student majoring in web development?
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It can be a college student majoring in history, quite frankly. You’d find a lot of college interns who can churn out great sites in just a few days.
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Ahh, so you refer to someone creating something better than what is there now but not the final version of what it will eventually resemble? Surely you’re not putting down government web development agencies such as CivicPlus, Civica, and Vision Internet in favor of a history student instead? Or, are you?
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Really depends on what your requirements are. Looks like those firms offer a total package in terms of hosting, design, development, maintenance, social media marketing, social media integration, copywriting, graphics. They are also prob very good at dealing with information architecture and navigation, which can sometimes be challenges for .gov sites. If a total package is what you need, then those firms look great. On the flip side, if you have a simple, static, information site that you need designed and implemented, interns are more than capable of leveraging platforms like WordPress to produce a great, maintainable site at a fraction of the price. If you have a site that is one main page and 20 subpages and a firm is quoting you $20k, then I’m can confidently say that there are cheaper alternatives — whether an intern, city hack or crowdsourcing via sites like 99designs — without sacrificing quality or speed.
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For second part of your question Ari, I know the companies you mentioned like CivicPlus and VisionInternet have sliding costs depending on your city/county costs – so that’s a good low cost option with high quality (I’d rather work with some company thats done thousands of local gov websites than a local developer)
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Agree on georgia.gov – here’s a pic
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Really digging aids.gov these days
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FYI – thought folks on this thread might be interested in the session “How to: Build a Great Government Website” – which is part of our Online Innovator’s Summit next week -free rsvp at https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=509866&sessionid=1&key=5BC77D3BBBC8CC450E90408725E8A98B&sourcepage=register
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Pittsburgh is pretty terrible
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Worst gov’t domain ever – COJ.net
Any guess what city this is? One of top 25 most populated
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I love you Memphis, TN but ouch on this site
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Tn.gov looking good
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OK…we’ve improved ours.How’s this: http://www.sacgreenteam.com
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Great improvements! I really like. Very easy to navigate.
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Pretty awesome site from Machester, UK – manchester.gov.uk
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That is a pretty awesome one. How did you come across this?
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I like gov.uk for its simplicity
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