NAHANT— Visitors to the town website will be pleasantly surprised when the new homepage loads.
The Town of Nahant website has received a much-needed update; the new design features a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate design with a clean layout. Also included in the new site is a news blog, a documents and forms section, a resource page, calendar, department pages with contact information, employment opportunities, and COVID-19 information.
The new site features direct links to the town’s social media pages and includes a search feature for users.
Town Administrator Antonio Barletta said the update was needed and it was time for a change.
“The old website that we had ― while it satisfied the needs for online service ― it wasn’t as user-friendly or digitally appealing,” said Barletta. “There are new things that we can do today that maybe weren’t around when that website was created.”
One of the first features that Barletta mentioned liking was how the site adjusts to whatever device someone is using. This is something that wasn’t on the former website, which only had a desktop option and forced mobile users to zoom in to discern what was on the site.
For Barletta, the biggest user-friendly update is the inclusion of a search bar.
“Before, there was a search (bar) but if you typed something in there it kind of just searched the entire web, where this is a website search bar; so you can go on there (and) you can type in ‘dog’ and anything on the website related to dogs, whether it be bylaws, how to get a license, anything related to dogs would pop up (and) show you the different options,” he said.
Barletta said that with COVID-19 affecting residents’ ability to be let into Town Hall, the town wanted to ensure that a lot of the functions of local government could be conducted remotely. One of the biggest parts of the website, he said, is the ability for committee notices to be submitted through the new website and be seen by the town clerk.
“It’s only a couple clicks,” said Barletta. “Once you submit it, the clerk gets a notification; once she reviews it and approves it, she hits ‘approve’ (and) it automatically gets published to the website, satisfying the Open-Meeting Law requirement.”
According to Barletta, the company that created the new website said that Nahant pioneered this new technology, which was developed from scratch. Other municipalities are now looking to add this function to their websites.
