Brewster Gives Its Town Website A Facelift

BREWSTER – This past winter, Civic Plus, the tech company that provides the platform for Brewster’s website — and for many other Massachusetts towns — informed Brewster officials it would be updating the platform’s format, meaning the town would also have to update its website.

Brewster already had a website that was honored a couple years ago by the Massachusetts Municipal Association as, in Town Manager Peter Lombardi’s words, “one of the top websites in the commonwealth at the time for communities of our size.” 

He called the more recent update, released on Monday, Aug. 24, “a refresh” of www.brewster-ma.gov.

“It…was not a voluntary conversion. This was us really needing to align with their new format,” Lombardi said.

But he added that the platform switch also offered an opportunity for the town’s four-person IT and media team — Constituent Service and Communications Coordinator Erika Mawn, Media Coordinator Suzanne Bryan, IT Director Kathy Lambert and IT/Media Specialist Ben McKenzie — to create a more user-friendly website.

The goal, stated in a public communication, was to design the new site “to make it easier for residents, businesses, and visitors to find information, connect with town departments, and access services online. The new platform is more mobile-friendly and it’s easier to maintain.”

The refresh received good reviews in its first week, Lombardi said. 

“All positive so far,” he said. “We had office hours with the select board and town manager later that afternoon on the day that we launched it, and we had a couple residents come in already who had been looking around [on the site], and we’ve had a handful of residents since then that have been positive.”

Research keyed the website’s update. Lombardi said Brewster’s quartet of IT and communications workers track how well the town’s digital outreach is working.

“Our communications team produces monthly reports that look at all the analytics of our website and our newsletter and social media…to make sure we’re getting out the information that residents want the most and use the most,” Lombardi said. “So when we did this redesign we largely based it on that data to make sure where people wanted to go was front and center.”

Thus, for example, the website’s home page features more prominently displayed links to the items of highest public interest. 

“We looked at the sites residents clicked on the most,” Lombardi said, listing beach information, the committee meeting calendar, recent news and announcements, trash and recycling, bill paying to the town, the permitting process, and “an email the town manager button.” 

Of that latter button, he said, “We find that’s a really helpful button for people with a question or concern or issue, and don’t know which town department to go to. Everybody in our office gets it, and we’re able to very quickly…send it off to the relevant department or respond to it ourselves.”

More study went into getting the facts correct and up to date as well as easier to track down. 

“We spent the past six-plus months working internally to check all the content to make sure it’s all accurate and still relevant for the conversion, and then also we made some changes to the format of the website, really based on feedback from the residents over the past several years about finding information and data as easily as they could.”

There is also a carry-over from the previous website — there is no need for residents to sign up again to receive newsletters or notifications.

“Everybody who signed up before will continue to get whatever information they signed up for,” Lombardi said. 

Some things have not changed much. “The general aesthetic of the site is not a lot different,” Lombardi said. 

The work of volunteer photographer Steve Koppel helped maintain the site’s look, he added. 

“We appreciate the continued partnership of Steve Koppel,” he said.

The changeover went smoothly except for a few “relatively minor things,” according to Lombardi. One glitch came when the first email announcing the refresh contained a link to what he called “an old, old site” — the town website immediately previous to the most recent version. 

“That was the only real glitch,” he said.

Given the numbers of lines of computer code and links involved, Lombardi said the update went well. He added the website refresh started from a position of strength. 

“It’s something we take a lot of pride in and spend a lot of time and resources on, because we realize that for most people that website is their first stop, their first interaction with the town,” he said. “So it’s something we try to get right.”

If residents log on and notice something that needs to be updated or have difficulty finding information, they can reach out to Erika Mawn at emawn@brewster-ma.gov.