Sandy Springs Celebrates Birthday With Website Overhaul

To celebrate its ninth year of incorporation, the city of Sandy Springs is giving the gift of improving the online experience of its citizens.

The city’s website has been “redesigned and reconfigured to improve the user experience,” Sandy Springs said Monday morning.

“As a population, we are spending more time in front of a screen, whether (on a) computer or (a) mobile device,” said City Manager John McDonough. “Based on feedback from the community through focus groups, web analytics, data from our Call Center and research, we’ve created an online presence we hope will add to the enhanced level of customer service our residents expect.”

The city’s home page, what Sandy Springs dubs as its “front door,” has been streamlined to more prominently feature Sandy Springs, particularly the people within the community.

The navigation now focuses on information frequently requested by residents, the business community and visitors. City improvement projects, such as roads and sidewalks, are mapped, as are the city’s parks.

Sandy Springs has also added promotional areas throughout the website, enabling cross-informational opportunities. For example, a visitor reviewing youth sports programming might see a news article about upcoming child safety programs held by the Sandy Springs Police Department.

With more than a third of the city’s web visitors using a mobile device to view the website, the city dedicated efforts to ensuring the site is responsive, giving the user a similar experience whether on mobile phone, tablet or desktop.

“Functionality is critical. While we’ve launched the new design, we consider the website in permanent beta mode,” McDonough added. “Our intent is to use data and feedback and continually refine the experience and content. With the new platform, we will be better able to adapt to the changing needs of the community.”

Along with the website launch, Sandy Springs Works makes its debut in Apple iTunes, Google Play and Blackberry app stores.

The mobile app provides residents with a tool to report items needing “work” directly to city staff. For the website redesign, the city worked with Vision Internet. See Click Fix provided the infrastructure for the Sandy Springs Works mobile application.

Photo: screenshot of Sandy Springs’ new website