Edmonston, Maryland is a community of about 1500 residents located in Prince George’s County about 2.5 miles from Washington, DC. The town wanted a new website that would look good and showcase the values of the town. The website also needed to be user-friendly, easy for residents to navigate and use on all devices, and easy for town staff to update.

Discovery

While this step is often cut short to save time and money, it forms the foundation of the web design process. The more a designer knows about a website’s users and stakeholders, the more effectively the website will meet their needs. Without a good discovery process, the website will be more about form and appearance than impact.

Existing website

The homepage content revealed a lot about the town, its values, and important content to be included on the website.

Welcoming
“Green”
Diverse and inclusive
Frequent news and event updates
Has its own government, police department, and public works department
Connected to other community organizations.

Although the content on the website was not organized in a way that made it easy to find, there was a lot there and most of it would be included on the new website.

Stakeholder interviews

Interviews with a town council member, staff, and residents confirmed the impressions of the town that I observed on the homepage. A major concern expressed by staff and a council member was the difficulty of updating the site and a site page structure that did not leave room for the updates they wanted to make. They also wanted a more up-to-date look for the website.

Design

Card Sorting

To plan the structure or site architecture of the website, I worked with a town council member on card sorting. We started with the content on the existing website, writing each topic on a little slip of paper. We then grouped the topics and named the groups, adding additional topics as needed.

Site Map

The site map was developed from the card sorting and refined with input from other town stakeholders.

Visual design

I developed the color scheme based on the town logo, making the predominant colors green and yellow. A slider that visually communicates the town values of green living in a diverse and vibrant community is the focal point of the home page. Below that is the latest news, consisting of 4-8 items with links to more information. A sidebar on the right lists upcoming events, again with links to more information.

Visit the Town of Edmonston website.

Creating the website in WordPress

Using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress simplifies the process of updating the website and offers plenty of options for customization. I chose the Virtue theme because it came with a homepage slider, a place for adding news as blog posts, and a sidebar. It also allowed for custom colors, font styles, html, and css.

Plugins for additional functions

I used WordPress plugins to add functions the town wanted including an event calendar, forms, tables, galleries, language translator, and notification bar. I also used plugins for back-end functions such as search engine optimization (SEO), redirection, and site back-up.

Reflections

This was one of the first websites I created, before I had taken any web design classes or gotten much web design experience, and I’ve learned a lot since I created it.

Plan your website with page speed in mind

Quickly-loading web pages are important for a good user experience. They also use less energy and improve search engine optimization (SEO). Your choice of hosting service and WordPress theme impact page speed and are hard to change later. Plugins can be great, but many of them slow down your website, so it’s important to consider page speed when you choose plugins.

Knowing how to use WordPress is not enough

Well, you may be able to create a website in WordPress without knowing anything else about web design, but to create a good website and keep it updated, you need to know a lot more.

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Town of Edmonston Website