City of Chester’s new website

i rarely go to Chester City's website. Only because of a comment on this blog did I follow up on the question, “Where is the City of Chester website?”

When I visited www.chestercity.com, I was surprised with a new design. I missed that announcement, too. 

I have experience designing (not developing) large websites, and I’m especially familiar with the practice of website usability. Sometimes that’s a curse because I’m always looking at ways to improve websites.

Here's my evaluation of the site.

The Good 

The layout is simple with easy to navigate menus and crisp clear photos. There is a lot of valuable content that citizens can benefit from, and some areas of the site present a great image of Chester.

I like the Housing Development page and photos, although the descriptions could be a lot cleaner. For example, on the Pentecostal Square listing it starts by saying “This past June....” Which past June? How about “In June 2011, the city celebrated the ground breaking...”  Or was it 2010?

My favorite pages are the Extensive Park System page, the City Directory, and the abundance of information on fees, costs, and penalties across all city departments. The Search function at the top of the page works very well.

Biggest Surprise 

After years of asking, I finally learned that Recycling is “now” mandatory. 

It is now (since when) mandatory that all residents separate newspaper, aluminum and metal cans, and glass from their regular trash. Put bundled newspaper in the red recycling containers along side of the blue recycling container. Read more on how to recycle household hazardous waste.

Mandatory, but with no enforcement. Hardly anyone recycles in Chester and no one is making us do so. 

The Bad

There is no excuse for a website not to load a page in sub-seconds if you are on a high speed connection. More importantly, websites must have a scaled down Smart Phone version, especially since most minorities access the web via their phones. 

The background photo of the Barry bridge has to be removed. Not only is most of the bridge blocked, it takes forever to load.  The slideshow on the home page takes a while to load and if were my design, I’d use photos of city assets and not city officials, like the PPL Park pic. There's enough pics of city officials in other parts of the site. 

• A lot of the photos on this site are too big. Resize them so they load a lot faster. 
• Use black instead of gray text. It’s a lot easier to read. 
• There’s not a single email address listed for anyone in city government that I could find.
• Some of the language is interesting, like “Currently experiencing a major metamorphosis...”, 
• Disaster Relief link takes you to the home page without the photo slide show.
• The site has a lot of links that go no where, particularly on the Forms and Permits pages.
• On the Events page, a major misspelled word jumps out at you right away.

Finally, I’m always miffed why Chester does not list Widener University and Crozer Hospital as two of their most significant assets. It helps with the image improvement messages. 

Conclusion 

Overall, the content on the site is an improvement over the old site. But like the old site, there is nothing that will draw a visitor back to the site unless they are looking for a phone number. 

In this day of social media, I’d like the city website to create a sense of community by added features that engage the residents and make us come back to the site for new information. Otherwise, this site is nothing more than an electronic brochure. Maybe that was the goal. 

I’d hope the design team is checking out other city sties and incorporating applicable design elements. If so, check out the city of Newark, NJ’s site. I like their site. 

Check out the Chester City site and tell me what you like, don’t like, learned, and any suggestions for change. 

Based on what I see, there’s still some work to do.