Municipal employees are miracle workers – often required to move mountains with very little resources. Many communities we work with stress how limited their time and capital resources are. If you’re a municipality in this situation, how do you decide what to focus on? Where should you be focusing your time?

The first step is to look at your web traffic statistics, using tools such as Google Analytics. Most website traffic follows something called the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule), where 20% of your web pages generate 80% of your web traffic.

Once you have the list of your website’s top pages, you will need to review to see if these top pages are generating pageviews from the audiences your organization wishes to attract. For instance, in most cases, your careers or job listings page will be in the top two or three pages and in some cases generate more pageviews than your website’s home page! If this is the case, and recruitment isn’t a priority for the municipality, you can remove the page, and its pageviews, from your list. This will increase your number of pages to concentrate on, but may provide a better reflection of your website’s audience.

For other pages high on the list which were not expected, take a look at where geographically these visitors are coming from. There may be content on your website that is of interest to an audience outside of your municipality, but should this be a priority if they are not residents or businesses interested in your municipality?

Although we’re discussing focusing solely on a handful of pages, this doesn’t mean you should remove 90% of your web content. There are a myriad of reasons why you want to keep “dead” pages:

• Pages that are required legally.
• Pages that only generate pageviews at certain times of the year.
• Pages such as emergency guidelines which do not generate much traffic, but in a crisis may become one of your most visited areas.
• Politically sensitive pages that are required to remain.

In conclusion, find which pages are your “traffic drivers” and focus your attention on those. Pages that are not driving traffic should be updated less frequently. Using a government CMS platform allows you the flexibility to modify pages and content as frequently as needed. Agility is key in building lean, usable, engaging websites particularly in municipalities where time and money are coveted resources.

Discover the flexibility that the CivicLive CMS offers to website administrators and authors. Learn About the CivicLive CMS.