Chattanooga is changing how it presents itself to the public. The city's revamped website is live, less than a month after Chattanooga leadership revealed a new city brand.
The new brand was one element of a city effort that included the website redesign, a project that came at a total cost of $1.02 million and spanned years. The city council in 2023 awarded a website project contract to CI&T, a multinational information technology firm, though project development began years before the award. The site's last major facelift came over a decade ago.
Chattanooga's leaders will use the results of the website and branding project -- its focus on progress and its nods to the past -- to shape how people see the city online and in the streets.
Finding a better method of organizing the information stored on the city website and offering clearer directions to functions like the ability to request a property tax freeze were key motivators underlying city efforts.
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Ellis Smith, director of intergovernmental and external affairs for Chattanooga, said in a phone interview that the city's first priority for the website redesign was user-friendliness.
"The website is emblematic of why Mayor (Tim) Kelly wanted to get into government," Smith said.
To get the most use out of the previous website, Smith said, a user would often need to know before navigating to a web page under which department a program was administered, for example. That could be frustrating for residents who wanted to use the site to pay their sewer bills, he said.
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A government doesn't generally have competition when it comes to providing information or services through a website, he said. But there's still a kind of provider-consumer relationship that requires government staff to think about what users need.
"You've got to figure out how to serve the customer, the resident, better than anyone else," he said.
Contact Mariah Franklin at mfranklin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.