Website Design Development and Technology Implementation Services

The Vendor is required to provide comprehensive website strategic consultation, project management, website design, development and implementation, including technology selection and procurement.
-The project includes all solutions for updating our website, with a more user-friendly website, emphasizing excellent user experience.
- Website project management, propose solutions to all outlined project priorities and recommend an itemized project budget to include any third-party services, including but not limited to:
•    Content Management System (CMS)
•    Hosting
•    Online Fillable Forms with Payment Fields
•    Mass Alert Text and Email Messaging System
•    Searchable Document Libraries
- The City’s vision is for our websites and other digital experiences to be built on a single CMS platform, to transition to a .gov domain for our primary website, and set a standard for government efficiency, user-friendly interface, streamlined digital government processes, and proactive communication with the public.
- The websites should be built on a robust, flexible, future-proof and user-friendly content management system (CMS) that supports long-term autonomy for City of Joplin staff.
- The new implementation must be designed to reduce dependency on developers for daily website updates while improving site usability, accessibility, and maintainability.
- Intuitive Navigation 
•    The current website structure is organized around community, business and government categories. 
•    The redesigned site must shift to a service-oriented, user journey-based navigation allowing residents, business managers, and visitors to quickly and intuitively locate services and information – regardless of department ownership. 
•    This approach should minimize clicks and reduce confusion. 
•    The site must support multiple methods for page discovery, including global navigation, secondary menus, footers, and an effective search experience.
- Visual Design Aesthetic
•    Design structure should rely on a component-based design system aligned with atomic design principles to enable reusability and syndication of content. 
•    The websites should integrate with the CMS to allow consistent design patterns across all pages. Websites should have a modern, community-reflective visual identity that reinforces user trust and engagement. 
•    We don’t want a site with outdated visual cues. 
•    User experience should feel comparable to the best user experiences across the internet in the private sector, not merely “decent for a local government.”
- Accessibility 
•    Accessibility is a top priority. 
•    Proposals should outline an accessibility-first design and development methodology, fully complying with the Americans with disabilities act (ADA), section 508 of the rehabilitation act, and WCAG standards. 
•    The city aspires to achieve wcag2 aa standards at minimum and AAA standards where possible, and will need coaching on policies and procedures to ensure all CMS users on city staff are not only capable of meeting these standards, but the design of the websites and CMS implementation are such that city staff will be limited to workflows which can only produce accessible content and web pages.
- Mobile-First
•    The website should be designed for a mobile-first experience, but also allow for excellent user experience and logical page layouts across all screen widths for interaction across devices.
- Strategic Planning & Discovery
•    The marketing & communications director and webmaster have conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research into the current website. 
•    Please review the exhibits attached to review this research and summaries of findings. 
•    The research has enabled us to draft this proposal with specific requests and prioritization of features desired for the city’s next website. 
•    Our research has included surveys of current CMS users, surveys of site visitors, and stakeholder interviews. 
•    This has led the marketing & communications department to gain a degree of confidence in understanding what is desired and prioritized for each city department, and what concerns trend across departments.
- Low-Level Access (Non-Technical Content Editors)
•    Can edit, add, or move content within their assigned sections without knowing HTML.
•    Use preapproved design patterns/templates.
•    Embed multimedia (images, video, audio, tables/graphs/charts) with resizing and optimization tools.
•    Easily create tables, graphs/charts and manage formatting.
•    Use pre-built templates for consistent content creation.
- Mid-Level Access (Managers and Approvers)
•    Inherit all capabilities of content editors at low level.
•    Review, approve and publish drafts from staff.
•    Restore and republish archived pages (seasonal or recurring content).
- High-Level Access (Administrative Users)
•    Manage user roles and permissions.
•    Edit or delete any content across the site.
•    Modify and organize site navigation and menus.
•    Embed widgets, custom HTML, or scripts without CMS overrides.
•    Create and manage new page templates using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Ideally, able to use Figma to bring in new page wireframes.

- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: September 24, 2025