My ongoing project of restructuring Ridgefield, Connecticut’s municipal site has been a learning process. If you have visited this site or similar town websites, you know they don’t always have the smoothest navigation. My goal of organizing and restructuring the current website has deemed a difficult one, where I quickly learned that I wouldn’t be able to redo the entire site only because the quantity of pages. However, I was able to focus on the main navigation bar, and my new site map has allowed these pages to become even more organized for a better user experience.

My previous post dives deep into the issues I came across and the changes I made to create the new website’s site map for Ridgefield, CT. The new map is also shown below.

While this one is more intuitive to how a new visitor would hope to find information, I knew I couldn’t stop there. My next step was to create a companion app for the town’s website. With the growing popularity of needing an app resource for most digital products, it made to sense to start building this site map as well.

Getting Started

I first started thinking… What would and wouldn’t be needed in the app? Who would be using the app? What would the user’s reasons be for using the app versus the site itself? This got me thinking that not all information from the website needed to be in the app. I quickly got rid of the visitors and the contact us pages. I felt that the majority of people downloading the app would be residents and they would most likely want information on the town or a department. Not necessary needing to get in contact with someone. So, I knew that removing these two categories would just simply the app a bit more.

From there I wanted to keep app’s navigation the same as the new website. Mostly because I felt this would allow users to become familiar with the layout and encourage them to use the app more often. I know from personal experience; I will often resort to just using the website on my computer because I have fear of getting lost within the site if its content is too heavy. Ridgefield’s app is going to be used for finding important, time-sensitive information, so the space needs to be friendly.

Double Checking

By keeping the top three buttons the same in the global navigation, it forced me to double check myself and my ideas. But I still found that my new structuring was solid and allowed the range of content to be displayed in a better way. It didn’t matter that this content would be shown on a smaller screen, or that this was my chance to cut out much of the “ugly” or “unusable” content. To me, what mattered the most was keeping the layout consistent.

Creating The Bottom Tab Navigation

One item I had in mind, was to add a paying taxes button. On the original Ridgefield site, this button was lower down on the homepage, separate from the global navigation. I thought this was odd, since this was probably one of the top reasons people visit their town’s website. I also remembered thinking taxes was one reason I would even download my town’s app in the first place. Therefore, I quickly added this to the bottom tab within the app. I wanted this to specifically be a quick access button, encouraging residents to see that the app does have advantages over the website.

 Another change to this tab was adding the social media buttons. Since users are already viewing this on their phone, it makes sense that this person would also want to keep up with the town via social media. This type of user is the perfect audience member that would follow, comment, and participate in the town’s social media pages.

Once I finished editing the bottom tab, the app’s site map was completed. As you can see from the image below, it looks very similar to the new website’s map. Except with less options in the global navigation tier.

Concluding

Looking over all three site maps, I felt a sense of completion. Just from a visual perspective, the new maps have a layout that is more structured and allows for an easier searching experience. It was important to start this project by analyzing the original site. It allowed me to select better categories and understand what was needed to be cut when crafting the app. For a town like Ridgefield, it’s important to have an app that is just as insightful as their website. But to create a digital product that will have great satisfaction in the community, it was necessary to limit some tabs and to keep the interface the same as the new proposed site. I feel confident that my decisions will be something the town will adopt and learn to love.

Below are all three site maps if you would like to see the process, thus far.