Website Design and Development Services

The Vendor is required to provide website design and development is built on sitefinity CMS, a proprietary content management system, and was designed by a third-party website designer.
- Project initiation, website inventory audit and site map recommendations
•    Compile an inventory of all current pages, content types (e.g., text, images, documents, forms), and multimedia elements.
•    Complete an analysis of site structure, navigation flow, user experience (UX) issues, accessibility compliance (e.g., WCAG 2.1 standards), and SEO performance.
•    Complete an audit of current content to identify what to migrate, archive, or discard, with a focus on relevance and SEO preservation. 
•    Provide recommendations for a new site map, including hierarchical organization, key user journeys, and prioritization of content based on user needs and functions (e.g., residents, businesses, visitors; search, apply, pay, report; etc.) Informed by industry best practices and benchmarking against comparable municipal websites. 
•    Emphasize alignment with municipal goals, such as improving public engagement and information accessibility.
- Design
•    Work with district staff to determine the district's preferred look and feel.
•    Develop layout option with modern, clean aesthetics, suitable for municipal websites.
•    Design a clear and user-friendly menu structure for easy content discovery using descriptive labels for menu items, avoiding jargon or ambiguous terms. 
•    Consider user interface and user experience (UI/UX) principles for optimal user engagement. 
•    Consider responsive design and utilize mobile-first principles as appropriate. 
•    Update and customize the selected design based on feedback from district staff, as required.
- Development and implementation
•    Implement the approved design, focusing on responsive layouts, cross browser compatibility, and efficient code to ensure performance of the website is maintained. 
•    Use an open-source CMS (e.g., Drupal, WordPress, etc.) to minimize ongoing maintenance costs and ensure optimal flexibility in the future. 
•    The CMS should have the necessary features and functionality 
•    Custom-code frontend (e.g., html/CSS/JavaScript) and backend functionalities, ensuring cross-browser compatibility and fast load times. 
•    Integrate third-party tools while maintaining data privacy compliance
•    Complete the work with an emphasis on modular development with version
•    Provide flexible templates for different content types (e.g. Articles, landing pages OTC) incorporate accessibility features from the outset (e.g., alt text for images, color contrast ratios, etc.) Incorporate superior search functionality, including the ability to search within documents and within embedded applications within an iframe. 
•    Incorporate SEO best practices, plugins and features to enhance search engine, generative engine, and answer engine visibility. 
•    Configure Microsoft ENTRA ID SSO (single sign-on) for login.
- Content migration
•    Approach to migrate and integrate existing content (including text, images, multimedia, etc.) To the new design. 
•    Timelines, risk assessments, and contingency measures to ensure minimal downtime during the process.
•    Use of automated tools (e.g., scripts or CMS plugins) for bulk migration of pages, media, and metadata, supplemented by manual reviews for accuracy. 
•    Use of smart URLs and URL redirection strategies (e.g., 301 redirects) to maintain search rankings and avoid broken links, where applicable. 
•    Quality assurance checks for accuracy, formatting, links, and accessibility post-migration. 
•    Appropriately sizing content in iframes.