NORWALK, Conn. – It’s time to refresh the city’s website, Norwalk Information Technology (IT) Director Karen Delvechhio said last week. But no progress can be made until the city hires a new marketing director, she said.
Delvechhio made the comments at the Planning Commission’s public hearing on the 2014-15 capital budget. NancyOnNorwalk could not make it but obtained a recording from the city.
Vocal Norwalk critic Diane Lauricella, a faithful attendee of the sparsely attended hearings over the years, began the conversation by asking that money be withheld from the IT Department until there is a plan developed to update the city’s website, including deadlines and a time schedule, which she also suggested last year.
“It’s not as user friendly for some simple things, including an important thing, which is finding the city council. There is no icon on the homepage,” she said. “The city council people will be asked, and many of them have said, that they think that this is not a user friendly website. Everyone on both sides of the aisle nods their heads. The time has come. It’s not just me.”
“As I mentioned in our workshop, we did not request funding for the city website, which, after three years, does need to be refreshed,” Delvechhio answered. “At this point, with the new administration, we are also waiting for the new director of marketing to come on board, as I also explained. It would not be, I think, prudent at this point to move forward with the refresh of the site until we have that marketing person on board so if there is an advertising or branding image plan put together for Norwalk we want to make sure that we are consistent with that.”
She went on to explain that the city invites feedback through the website and through customer service. There have been 60 entries since the site launched three years ago, she said. Everyone of the comments, ideas or praise has been answered.
“Sometimes we are not able to make changes because it requires special software for the user to download,” she said. “Sometimes the changes that are suggested will make it difficult to translate to another language. Sometimes what is requested for changes makes the site less ADA (American Disabilities Act) compliant. Our site is a 508 federal ADA compliant site which not all sites are and as a result they are a little bit more simple to use because they aren’t translated.”
The city’s website was designed by Civic Plus at a cost of $76,000, she said. She did not know how much it would cost to redesign it.
“I have no idea. My sense is – there’s two sides, the front side and the back side. We wanted to make changes, particularly on the back side, because there’s new technology available,” she said, referring to the proliferation of smart phones and tablets.
IT just worked with the Health Department to create an app, which will be available on iTunes, she said.
“On the front side, my sense is that before we leap forward – I am not an advertising/marketing person, I’d really like to have the marketing person on board so that we can work with that person,” she said.
That brought a comment from a commissioner – the visitor’s tab is “atrocious,” he said.
“There’s nothing there, frankly,” he said. “As a brochure for the city it’s ridiculous. I take your answer that you’re waiting for the director of marketing to be hired because you’re thinking about redoing the brochure part of the website.”
Absolutely, Delvechhio said.
“As an IT Department we had attempted to engage the former director of marketing on a number of occasions to work with us on developing that whole piece of it,” she said. “Before the site went live we did work with the Chamber of Commerce to give us their feedback on the business part of it, doing business in Norwalk. We got some really good feedback from the chamber prior to release of the site but in terms of developing the tourism piece of it I think all of Norwalk would benefit from ‘What is our brand image?’ That’s across all aspects of Norwalk and the website is part of that.”
She was asked if the department would get to work on a website refresh once a new marketing person is on board.
Absolutely, Delvechhio said.
“It’s high on my list,” she said. “I can’t speak for what’s on that person’s list because they don’t report to me but certainly that’s my goal.”
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