South Taranaki District Council Website Wins Award

South Taranaki District Council website, www.southtaranaki.com , won the ‘People’s Choice’ Award for the best redeveloped/new website at the 2011 ALGIM web symposium awards held last night in Wellington.

The annual ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management) symposium is the premier event for website and online services in the public sector.

STDC communications officer, Rachael Murphy, who accepted the award on Council’s behalf, says that while she knew the Council’s website was a strong contender it was going to be tough competition.

“We knew we had a good chance as we made the final four to begin with, but we were up against larger city Council’s that have their own website teams and budgets to match,” says Miss Murphy.

“Our Council didn’t have a big budget and we certainly don’t have any website team – but what we did have was a creative, passionate team at the Council who knew exactly what they wanted, and a great working relationship with the team at Efinity; a Taranaki based internet company who built the site,” she says.

A major challenge the Council faced when designing the new site was how to create something which encapsulated a whole range of information about what South Taranaki offered.

“Being a small district we don’t have the resources to have multiple websites for things like our libraries, museums, district tourism and the like - so we wanted to make the new website South Taranaki’s primary marketing and communication tool,” says miss Murphy.

“We divided the site up into 4 key subsections; Council, Live, Visit and Work - to promote Council activities and services, information for current and potential residents, information for tourists and visitors, as well as business information and support,” she says. The new site includes a raft of new features such as online service applications, radio podcasts, google maps, research databases, online catalogues, blogs, multimedia videos and picture galleries and electronic newsletters.

“The site is packed full of features and information about South Taranaki so if you haven’t had a look you should definitely check it out!”

ENDS

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