City Debuts Fresh New Website Design

The City of Sanford’s long-awaited new website went live at sanfordmaine.org Wednesday, October 5, 2022 with a bright and engaging design featuring a revamp of the City’s official logo and a new slogan: Your Future Is Here. The new website is the biggest project yet undertaken by the City’s Communications Coordinator, Jordan Wilson, who was hired last fall.

“When I first started in my position in November I knew we needed a new website and the results of our ‘In the Know Community Info Survey’ confirmed this. Our old site was not user-friendly and residents and staff often struggled to find what they were looking for,” she said.

Ms. Wilson has spent many months working on the new site with Revize, a company specializing in municipal website design. “They call themselves, ‘the government website experts’ and I trusted the experts. But this also has been a City-wide initiative. All of our department heads sat in on hours of training and worked hard to update and refresh their department pages. This really has been a group effort,” she said.

The home page features video of some of the most beautiful and iconic locations around town. Visitors using a desktop or laptop computer will see a banner across the top of every page with drop-down menus that enable them to easily find what they are looking for. On a mobile device, tapping on the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner will bring down those same menus.

As you scroll down the home page, you will find the Latest News & Announcements, a calendar of Upcoming Events, and text links to some of the most-used sections. A pop-up window on the home page invites you to sign up for the City’s forthcoming email newsletter.

A brand new feature in the site design is the How Do I menu, which residents can use to quickly find the answer to the most-asked questions. For example, How Do I > Apply For > Building Permits takes you to a page with links to all the different types of permit applications, including electrical permits and curbcut applications. How Do I > Pay takes you to a page with links to ATV/snowmobile registrations, dog licenses, traffic citations online, and more.

Individual City Departments have their own sections linked through the Departments menu. The new design makes it easy to navigate and find the information you need, such as Hiring a Police Officer, Rubbish & Recycling FAQs, or Voter Registration, with just a few clicks or taps.

The City’s Facebook and Instagram pages are prominently linked at the top of every page with their recognizable logos. To the left of the social media logos is a dropdown menu that visitors can use to translate the site into a host of different languages, including Filipino, Khmer and Spanish. The lime green logo to the right, which many people may not recognize, links to the City’s GIS, or Geographic information System, which displays interactive maps including tax maps, zoning maps and much more.

Ms. Wilson will be giving a demonstration of the new website at the next City Council meeting on October 18.