Revitalizing the City of Beaumont

Project Details

This project included two key phases: a content consultation phase and a website rebuild phase. The City of Beaumont’s new website delivers a streamlined, task-focused experience, making it easy for citizens and business owners to confidently find and access the services they need.

Problem Statement

The City of Beaumont had an outdated and cumbersome web experience. We conducted a content consultation phase to untangle the existing site structure. Armed with this research, the City of Beaumont embarked on the project to build a new, streamlined, task-oriented site that would foster positive user sentiment and redefine the digital presence of Beaumont.

The key project goals included:

• Establish credibility, quality, and trust with Beaumont residents, businesses, and communities.
• Accurately reflect city-wide information that is easy to find through clear content flow.
• Provide confidence to the community that they can rely on the website to serve their needs.
• Showcase the Beaumont story and everything the City has to offer, attracting new investment from both businesses and residents looking to move to the area.
• Maintain a polished UX experience that includes responsive design and meets accessibility guidelines (WCAG current version), World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C), and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines.

What We Did

Content Consultation & Discovery

The project began with a website discovery. Our tasks in discovery included:

• content modeling where we organized over 800 pages of content and complex navigation menu items.
• Content audit to organize the high level of content, creating a content governance guide.
• Gathering and prioritizing features and functional requirements.
• Conducting a public engagement survey to understand citizens’ top priorities.
• Tree testing to analyze and validate the proposed site structure.
• In-depth interviews with City departments to uncover pain points, goals, and their ideal future state.
• Comparative analysis for the main site navigation to find the ideal navigation design.

Through research, consultation, and assessment we were able to identify the functional requirements for a successful new digital experience. We organized the high amount of content into a much more compact, easy to follow information architecture. We then validated this plan with the City of Beaumont to ensure we’d addressed their needs, desires, and challenges.  

Design and Build

With a solid plan in place, we designed a scalable, modern, and clean digital foundation. The project required pivoting the City’s existing brand and working collaboratively to ensure accurate brand representation on the site, with a design that could evolve over time.

Previously, Beaumont was using a proprietary CMS that limited their ability to manage content and documents in a user-friendly way. We transitioned them to a modern WordPress CMS, developing a flexible data structure that enabled them to maintain consistency across the site.

The main features and functionality highlights of the new website included:

• Robust navigation for easy user access.
• An improved search experience capable of handling a large volume of documents, such as bylaws and permits, with filtering and archival capabilities.
• Custom page builder components for flexible content management.
• Public notices functionality, allowing the City to quickly share critical information concerning residents, with emergency notices prominently displayed on the site header.
• Event management with calendar views, filtering, and ticket sales functionality. 

The new website achieved accessibility standards and is WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

Content Work

Paper Leaf executed the content plan and logistics of site, including:

• Page mapping all old web pages to the new pages on the staging site.
• Manually migrating, consolidating, and editing page content.
• Providing content design to lay out City of Beaumont information in an accessible and effective manner.

With the detailed site map in hand, Paper Leaf and Beaumont worked with an external contractor to deliver the content migration and implement the plans.

Outcomes

The City of Beaumont’s website redesign project was a collaborative success, delivering a modern, accessible, and user-centered digital platform. The positive feedback from both the community and senior leadership at the City of Beaumont speaks to the impact of the work. Paper Leaf’s expertise in content strategy, design, and development was instrumental in transforming the site’s architecture, enhancing usability, and creating a scalable framework for ongoing optimization and continuous improvement.