Project Description
Position: UX Designer, UI/Web Designer
Website Url: www.townofmilfordny.com
Milford, NY’s current site was built with Weebly. It was hard to edit, and had many errors. The town board wanted a new, responsive, easy to use and edit website with a new design. I suggested that we build the new site on WordPress, we reorganize the content, reduce the errors, transcribe some of the pages that were PDFs and create an appealing design that’s responsive.
Research & The Plan
I started by examining the town’s current site. The menu had blank pages, and links were broken or mislabeled. The about us, events and contact pages were hidden. Their old site didn’t have any meta data, H1s, alt tags, or sidebars. Their homepage had very little content on it. There was a flower image that took up about half of the ‘above the fold’ space. There were no steps or call to actions for a new user to find information or to get to what they were looking for. There was no clear direction for new or returning users.
My plan was to add clear language on the menu and the homepage, and bring the most commonly used or important pages to the top of the menu. I also wanted to add call to actions to the homepage and images of the town throughout the website.
I researched town websites to see how they organized their content. Most of these websites had an ‘About’ page right on the main menu. They also had a departments section, minutes for town meetings, and they all had images that displayed the land of their towns or recognizable town attractions. However, most of the town websites I researched were also outdated and some did not have responsive designs.
Wireframes & Prototypes
I used Adobe XD to plan the design of the homepage. The town board did not have any stipulations on the design other than it needed to have an updated, responsive design and use a maroon color. My goal was to make it visually appealing, and provide the quickest way to get to the information the new and old users are looking for.
