Website Strategy, Design, Development and Ongoing Services

Vendor will be responsible for the Website Strategy, Design, Development and Ongoing Services may include:
• Create modern, welcoming and accessible digital experiences tailored to the audiences and purposes of each website.
• Improve navigation, search and access to Village information, services and transactions.
• Balance government service delivery with community identity, storytelling and engagement.
• Provide a flexible, secure and user-friendly content management system that Village staff can manage effectively.
• Improve the quality, organization and accessibility of website content through professional content strategy, copywriting, editing and migration.
• Establish a sustainable approach to hosting, maintenance, support, governance and continuous improvement.
- Discovery and Strategy
• Conduct project kickoff and discovery activities with Village staff and key stakeholders.
• Review existing websites, analytics, search data, user feedback, governance practices and available research.
• Identify priority audiences, user needs, business goals, content needs and measures of success.
• Recommend a strategy and roadmap for the three-site portfolio.
• Document findings and recommendations in an approved strategy brief that will guide information architecture, design, content and implementation.
- Information Architecture and User Experience
• Develop an intuitive, audience-focused information architecture for each website.
• Organize information around what users want to find, understand, experience or accomplish rather than the Village’s departmental structure alone.
• Conduct appropriate user research and usability testing.
• Develop sitemaps, navigation models, wireframes and prototypes for Village review and approval.
• Provide robust search across website pages, documents and other applicable public content.
Search should support relevant results, common terminology and misspellings, filtering where appropriate, search analytics and administrative tools that allow Village staff to review
unsuccessful searches and improve results over time.
- Creative Design and Storytelling
• Develop a modern, welcoming and responsive visual experience for each website.
• Balance convenient access to government services with community identity, storytelling, news, events and engagement.
• Establish a coordinated visual system while preserving an appropriate identity and experience for each website.
• Provide flexible page layouts and reusable components that Village staff can manage without coding.
• Recommend effective uses of photography, video, graphics and other multimedia content.
• Present proposed design concepts and refine the selected direction through an agreed-upon review and approval process before full development.
- Content Strategy, Copywriting and Migration
• Complete a content inventory and evaluate existing content for retention, revision, consolidation, archival or removal.
• Develop content standards, voice and tone guidance, and page templates appropriate to each website.
• Provide professional copywriting, rewriting and editing using plain-language and web-writing best practices.
• Work with Village subject-matter experts to confirm content accuracy and secure approvals.
• Develop page titles, metadata and other foundational search engine optimization elements for approved content.
• Develop a content migration plan and migrate approved pages, documents, images and other materials.
• Complete content quality assurance before launch.
• Inventory documents and PDFs proposed for migration, identify accessibility concerns, and recommend which materials should be remediated, converted to web content, archived or removed.