Webinar Recap: The Platform Isn't the Problem
Most municipalities that go through a website refresh come out the other side feeling like something is off. The site looks better. It loads faster. The platform is newer. But a year or two in, the same problems are back. Content is stale. Nobody's sure who owns what. The contact centre is still fielding the same calls.
We hosted a webinar last week with Brandon Currie, our web services lead, to talk about why this keeps happening and what to do about it. Here's what we covered.
The data is pretty uncomfortable
We asked attendees a simple question: after your last website improvement, did things significantly get better?
6% said meaningfully better. 44% said some improvement, but the same core problems remain.
Municipalities are spending capital dollars, dedicating staff years to these projects, and coming out the other side with little to show for it. The platform isn't the problem.
Platform standardization has arrived. Governance maturity hasn't.
We've been running a municipal website inventory and self-assessment across Canada, and the headline finding is this: ownership and operations are more predictive of website quality than the platform you're on. We saw newer sites underperforming and older ones doing just fine. The same governance problems showed up regardless of CMS.
We pulled together the full research in our Website Governance Gap report. If you want the complete picture before your next website decision, that's the place to start.
“We have a 6% chance of it being better than the old website. It was a pretty telling message.”
Nobody knows who owns the website
In most municipalities, if something goes wrong with content, not technically, but content, nobody can give you a straight answer about who's responsible. Usually it's a blend of whoever runs communications and a rotating cast of business unit staff who were trained two refreshes ago and have since left.
The symptoms show up publicly. A bad finance system stays inside the building. A broken page on your website gets noticed by everyone, including councillors.
Trying to make every department responsible for content design off the side of their desks isn't a realistic model. It doesn't hold up over time, and most people don't actually want to manage the website. They want it managed well.
“Picture it like a restaurant. Your folks in planning, engineering, bylaw are the suppliers. They give you the raw ingredients, but they don’t decide what goes on the menu or how people feel when they walk in.”
What actually works
Get customer service in the room. They're talking to residents all day and they know exactly where the website is failing because they're fielding the calls a working website would have prevented. They belong in your governance structure, not just consulted after the fact.
Use data to end the arguments. There's a lot of internal debate about what gets prioritized and what gets built. Data kills that conversation.
Treat it like a product, not a project. Once the project team disbands, somebody still has to actively manage the thing. Your digital front door needs the same approach Apple takes with the iPhone: continuous improvement, year over year.
“Municipalities tend to work off gut feel. We need to work more off data.”
If you're mid-project right now
The refresh is your best window to make structural changes because there's momentum and a sense of renewal. Use it.
Start the conversation about how you're going to operate the site once it's live before the project ends. That conversation is a lot easier to have before launch than after. If you're not sure where to start or you know the problems but don't have a plan to move them forward, that's exactly where a conversation with Brandon is useful.
Book a call with Brandon Currie at perrygroupconsulting.ca
“If you’re a hoarder, you don’t just buy a new house. You have to fix some of your habits before you do it, or you’ll fill up the new house.”