IT'S HERE! A WEBSITE DESIGNED WITH RESIDENTS FOR RESIDENTS

The new and much anticipated City website has officially launched into cyberspace today. Saskatoon.ca is now on-line.

 Over a year-long redevelopment, residents and the City revisited almost every aspect of the City’s approach to providing online services to citizens.

“A fundamental goal for us was to gear it towards how people looked for City information,” says Catherine Gryba, General Manager of Corporate Performance.  “We wanted to create a website designed with residents, for residents and we are pleased with the results.”

The new website design is easier to provide residents access to timely information and makes it easier to do business with the City.  Residents will experience improvements to 22 online services such as the Property Tax & Assessment Tool and Utility Bill lookup. The reconstruction also included a review process which eliminated outdated content and reorganized information to make it easier to search and navigate.

“Early on, we recognized we had an opportunity and responsibility to completely reimagine our approach to serving residents online,” says Rob Gilhuly, Website Project Manager.

“Throughout the redevelopment, we invited residents to participate in decisions about the new Saskatoon.ca, including setting priorities for online services, designing navigation, and selecting the visual design of the site,” Gilhuly says. Last April, the City launched the dedicated engagement site, new.saskatoon.ca, which had more than 10,000 visits over the course of the project. Residents completed over 1,000 surveys and voted 1,700 times on polls about various aspects of the site. A preview version of the site in development was launched in November for residents to provide even more feedback.

“Our work on the web will never be finished, but what we are launching today is the first step of a new approach that considers the needs of users first”, Gilhuly says. “With any project of this scope, we acknowledge there may be a few minor bugs to address and some of these bugs aren’t always discovered until the website is in full use,” he says.  “We continue to be committed to designing this with residents for residents, so if you discover a bug we not only want to know, but we will also put your name into a contest.”

The City is now inviting residents to provide feedback and participate in a contest for reporting bugs and trying out the new site features. Check out the Announcements on the homepage of saskatoon.ca for contest details.

Thanks to all of our residents for your support and participation. We couldn’t have done it without you.

For more information visit www.saskatoon.ca or connect with us on Twitter and Facebook

 -30-