Wellesley ramping up new, user-friendly Town website

The Town of Wellesley is debuting a new Town website (www.wellesleyma.gov) in the coming weeks. Wellesley has partnered with CivicPlus to bring a fresh new look and user-friendly design to the site, which will be live by August 7. CivicPlus has built more than 2000 government websites across the country, including many recent winners of the MA Municipal Association’s annual website awards.

During the past nine months, a representative working group of Town managers researched current municipal website best practices and listened to feedback from public meetings on the Unified Plan. The group analyzed statistics on hits, searches, and downloads from our current Town website, and worked with the team at CivicPlus to build a site that is expected to be much easier to use and more intuitive to navigate. More specifically, the new site:

• Provides quick access to the most frequently requested services and information
• Aggregates agendas / minutes for most Town Boards and Committees on a single page
• Is built with a mobile-friendly responsive design
• Offers a personalized user experience, allowing you to create an account and engage only in information you care about
  

What you need to know…

• The Town’s main web address (www.wellesleyma.gov) will not change, but you may need to update existing bookmarks to interior pages in your browser’s settings.
• If you are a current subscriber to one of our website’s active news lists (www.wellesleyma.gov/subscriber), we suggest that you set your spam blocker to allow for mail from listserv@civicplus.com. Once the new site goes “live”, we encourage you to create an account and explore the wider variety of available subscription options.
• Departmental mailing lists (maintained by the NRC, COA, and others) will migrate to the CivicPlus platform over the next few months. Current subscribers to these lists will be contacted separately with specifics.
• Emergency, traffic, and utility alerts will continue to be sent separately by the Wellesley Police Department, and you can sign up for these at www.wellesleypolice.com.
  

A “refreshed” website is an important step in the Town’s efforts to deliver the best available online municipal services and to increase transparency. Coming soon in FY18, Town managers will work with State officials to develop a Citizen Engagement Communications Plan, and will explore options to support online permit and license applications.

For questions or concerns about the new website, or to suggest new online features or functionality, please contact the Town of Wellesley Information Technology department at ITD@wellesleyma.gov.