Skip to content

Industries · №008

Websites for municipalities.

Residents don't visit a town website to browse. They come to get something done.

Brief · №008

A website for municipalities

  1. 01Services first
  2. 02Plain language
  3. 03Accessible to everyone
  4. 04Easy for staff to keep current

Silvanè Studios · Fergus, Ontario

For municipalities01

Silvanè Studios designs websites for municipalities, towns and townships, parks and recreation districts, downtown and business improvement associations, and other public bodies, from our studio in Fergus, Ontario. Every site is organised around what residents and businesses come to do: pay, apply, book, report and find out, written in plain language and accessible to everyone.

The brief02

What a website for municipalities has to do

  1. 01

    Services first

    Pay a bill, apply for a permit, book a facility, report a problem: the most-used tasks on the homepage, not buried under the org chart.

  2. 02

    Plain language

    Pages written for residents, not departments, so people find the answer without phoning the office.

  3. 03

    Accessible to everyone

    Designed to WCAG 2.2 AA, which covers Ontario's AODA website requirements, and usable on any phone.

  4. 04

    Easy for staff to keep current

    News, notices, council meetings and closures posted by staff in minutes, with roles and approvals where you need them.

Where it goes wrong03

Why most municipal sites fall short

They're organised like the town hall, not like the town.

Sites often mirror the internal structure: departments, divisions, by-laws, with the task a resident came for three menus deep. Search fills the gap badly, and the phones ring for answers that are already online somewhere.

The approach04

A site staff can run.

We start with the tasks residents come for and the questions staff answer most, then design the structure around them. The site is built on a CMS your staff can use day to day, with the integrations you already rely on for payments, bookings and meetings, training for your team, and support after launch. We respond to public RFPs.

See how we work for other businesses in selected work, and how a project runs in our process.

Questions05

Questions municipalities ask

Do you respond to municipal RFPs?
Yes. Send us the RFP and we'll respond with a proposal that answers its evaluation criteria, a timeline and a fixed price.
Will the site meet AODA requirements?
Sites are designed to WCAG 2.2 AA, which goes beyond the WCAG 2.0 AA level Ontario's AODA requires, and are checked before launch.
Can staff update the site themselves?
Yes. News, notices, meetings and service pages are edited by your staff, with training and documentation at handover.
Can you work with our existing systems?
Usually, yes. We connect the site to the payment, booking, agenda and mapping tools you already use rather than replacing them.

Where we work

FergusGuelphKitchenerWaterlooMiltonMississaugaToronto
Other industries06

Websites for other industries

All industries

Start a project

Tell us about your business. We’ll design the site that takes it further.

Start a ProjectSee the work →