TS Creates La Cañada Flintridge’s New Website
When the City of La Cañada Flintridge (LCF) decided to upgrade its 10-year-old website, LCF staff turned to Tripepi Smith to create a new website that is easy-to-use and has optimal accessibility features.
Over the course of five months, Tripepi Smith designed, developed and delivered a new platform for La Cañada Flintridge that presents information through a clean, modernized and user-friendly design and simplifies the user experience. The new website was launched on September 3, 2019.
“The City recognized that our website was the weakest link in our communication strategy. We value public input and transparency, and while we have seen a lot of progress in the City in the last several years, the website always failed to reflect that progress. We knew it was time for a change,” said Arabo Parshegian, division manager at the City of La Cañada Flintridge. “Following a competitive bidding process, we chose Tripepi Smith for the project. Tripepi Smith was communicative throughout the entire process and they brought ideas and solutions to the discussion. Their understanding of local government enabled them to deliver a website that exceeded our expectations. The site will serve our residents for years to come.”
Led by Senior Business Analyst Melanie James, the firm implemented a number of helpful tools and necessary modifications to the City’s website including:
- An SSL certification
- SEO optimization
- Language translation with more than 14 language options and ADA compliance
- Social media integration
- Calendar integration
- Blog/newsfeed
- Document manager
- Custom forms
- FAQs for each City department
“While redesigning the City’s website, our main goal was to improve the functionality of the website so residents could easily find the information they need and stay connected with the City,” Melanie said. “We recognize the increasingly significant role a City’s website holds in working with the community, and we work to develop functional platforms that meet the needs of City staff and residents.”
In addition, Tripepi Smith created a color scheme that reflected La Cañada Flintridge’s branding and showcased its recent logo update. The dark green, light green and orange colors offer a fresh look to the website while making it easy to explore.
The website’s design uses large landscape images to break up chunks of text, colorful homepage buttons to provide convenient shortcuts and a footer with columns for the City’s news feed, upcoming events and social media feeds to effectively use all of the given space.
Finally, emergency popups and the ability to create landing pages were added to the website so residents could quickly find pertinent information in the event of a local emergency. Those have proved particularly helpful as the City has responded to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tripepi Smith also trained City staff to manage the website and remain available to remedy any website issues on an adhoc basis. The WordPress content management platform is an open-source, commonly used framework for website development. The shift to non-proprietary platforms to deliver websites for public agencies is proving popular as cities move to avoid technology lock-ins.
Tripepi Smith has previously designed and delivered new websites for the Sacramento Regional Fire/EMS Communications Center, Rowland Water District, Trackdown Management, the San Gabriel City Managers Association, Center for Public Safety Management,and the South Orange County Wastewater Authority among others.
The City of Cañada Flintridge has previously tapped Tripepi Smith to deliver a communications assessment, a logo redesign, the creation of three social media channels and a social media policy, their quarterly community newsletter, the LCF Vista, and ongoing strategic communications work.
About the City of La Cañada Flintridge
The City of La Cañada Flintridge is a bedroom community of over 20,000 residents and 6,750 households nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California. La Cañada Flintridge is scenically located at the base of the Angeles National Forest; it is a short drive to the urban centers of downtown Pasadena, Glendale, and Los Angeles. With a tradition of limited government, City Hall is committed to providing residents with a high level of service while keeping government small.
About Tripepi Smith
Tripepi Smith is an Orange County-based marketing, technology and public affairs firm that serves for-profit, nonprofit and public agencies. Its unique mix of marketing and technology prowess provides a competitive advantage to agencies seeking to leverage the internet to achieve their communication goals. The firm provides full content creation services, including: ghost writing, collateral development, photography, video production, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing campaigns and website design and execution. Tripepi Smith clients include: City of American Canyon, City of Culver City, City of Cupertino, City of Daly City, City of Duarte, City of El Cerrito, City of Indian Wells, City of La Cañada Flintridge, City of Lakeport, City of Lake Forest, City of Paramount,City of Rolling Hills Estates, City of Santa Ana, City of Santa Cruz, City of Tracy, City of Yuba City, Cal Choice, California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, Bellflower-Somerset Mutual Water Company, Inland Empire Utilities Agency, Rowland Water District, Valley Water Company, California Contract Cities Association, California City Management Foundation, Institute for Local Government, League of California Cities, Renne Public Law Group, Bob Hall & Associates and Climatec Energy Services.