Changes to stlouis-mo.gov

Goals for This Release

1. Promote awareness of city services and accomplishments
2. Highlight service changes during holidays
3. Make it easier to browse for information
4. Easier to read content

Promote Awareness of City Services and Accomplishments

The City of St. Louis has a lot to offer, but many people are not aware of the wide variety of services we provide. To draw attention to how the City of St. Louis can help you, we now:

1. Make an effort to publish more news articles about what’s happening in government
2. Use high-impact images to promote services and news
3. Make service articles more engaging and easier to find
4. Promote services on our Topic pages

Highlight Service Changes During Holidays

Sometimes service schedules have to change due to holidays or inclement weather. Why should this information be hard to find? To address this:

1. Service changes are front and center on the home page
2. We’ve created a calendar of City holidays when we know services will change

Make it Easier to Browse for Content

Many people who come to our website have a general idea of what they want to accomplish, but don’t have the institutional knowledge to know which department or agency can help them. We’ve had Topic and Audience pages for a long time, but these pages were not featured before. Now:

1. Related topics are now featured on main site landing pages
2. Pages are constantly under review to make sure they are tagged with the correct topics
3. Topic and Audience pages are organized by content types, which are under review for usability and relevance

Easier to Read Content

This release contains many general style changes, in an effort to increase readability and usability:

1. Fonts are larger across the board by default
2. Responsive design has better breakpoints to accommodate mobile and tablet browsers
3. Color scheme is more upbeat and pleasing to the eye
4. Page download sizes are considerably smaller, and will be continuously improved

Up Next

We’re far from done. Websites can and should be iterated on continuously, and stlouis-mo.gov is no exception. Here’s what we have planned:

1. Improved navigation
2. Improved search
3. Continued user testing
4. Integration of services information pages and Citizens’ Service requests
5. Enhance how the results are presented in applications like address search