Website project soon underway

Times Reporter        

 

The town’s website will soon be getting a facelift after approval was given for Twist Marketing to re-design the current site. 

In May funds were approved for the redesign and redevelopment of the website. A Request For Proposal (RFP) was put out to the public for approximately a five-week period, and 30 businesses responded.  

The proposals ranged in price from $10,735 to $33,117, mostly from North America and a few from overseas, said Tracy Simpson, community services coordinator for the town. 

The 30 proposals were reviewed and searched for specific criteria laid out in the RFP and specific requirements for the website itself to narrow down the proposals.  Simpson, Dan Wilchowy and Jennifer Cuthbertson then continued to narrow things down further by looking at previous experience in municipal and community website development.

Once it was down to four businesses, interviews were conducted to find out more and to learn about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that may need to be taken care of. 

“One of the big concerns is that Jennifer and I are not very tech savvy and we wanted to make sure we can update the website easily without anyone’s help on a day-to-day basis,” said Simpson.

Twist Marketing was the one that stood out. They quoted $27,000 plus GST, and said it will take about 12 weeks to set everything up and get it running. Simpson said that the company feels that in taking the 12 weeks to set things up, town staff will learn quite a bit about the website and they don’t feel that in-depth training is needed in the end; however, if it is needed then it will be added on. 

Twist Marketing will provide ongoing support and hosting and will continue to update it and resolve glitches. The contract is also on a year-to-year basis, opening up other options if need be.