Design study · City government · CMS concept
The city's front desk, now online
A city website concept built search-first, on the premise that a municipal site is a front desk rather than a publication.
Concept only. Not an official City of Dover website.
- Municipal website design
- Search-first
- Ask assistant
- Staff CMS
- Accessibility
City of Dover — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
City websites are organized as publications — departments, sections, pages — and used as front desks. Someone arrives with a question a clerk could answer in one sentence, and instead has to guess which department owns it. Every additional guess is a phone call the city then has to field, which means a poorly organized site costs staff time rather than saving it.
The approach
Search leads rather than sits in a corner, with an Ask Dover assistant answering plain questions over 553 records so a resident's phrasing does not have to match the city's filing. A staff-editable CMS underpins it, because the search index is only as good as the content behind it and content only stays current if the people who know it can publish directly. Accessibility is audited rather than asserted.
The result
Eight routes with search across 553 records, an answer assistant, a staff content system, and a clean accessibility audit.
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