Castle Cary Town Website

town council websites

Castle Cary town Council approached us to tender for their town website earlier this year. A beautiful market town in the heart of Somerset, Castle Cary's website was looking very dated, being built approximately 8 years ago on WordPress. The Council was finding it harder to update each month and the main menu had suffered a common problem, bloating. Any website that goes on for a few years and has different contributors regularly suffers from this. The menu seems to grow and grow until it looks more like a paragraph of text. 

We are Chain applied for the tendering process and were successful in being awarded the website. This process included an interview with the council and relevant stakeholders.  We were delighted with the win and decided to follow on from our work on Langport Town website to see where we could improve.

Town Council Website Requirements

The majority of Town Councils are responsible for keeping residents informed with information about their own meetings, AGM's, Financial processes and how they run the town. In some cases, they are also responsible for promoting the town as a tourist destination. This is the case with both Langport and Castle Cary. 

They required a website that would contain easy to access council information alongside showcasing the local events scene and local businesses. This is where WordPress comes in handy. A content management system perfect for controlling and displaying lots of information. The website also needs to be easy to update by multiple stakeholders. 

The website also needs to be accessible to all users, with controls for different disabilities. 

Business and events Listing

there is a lot of work involved in updating websites and not many councils have the time or budget to do everything.  this is where a good automation system comes in handy. Giving the end user the ability to upload their own events and business listings. using tools like Events Calendar and Geo Directories you can give people the tools to upload their own info and even charge them where necessary. 

This means you can let users do the work and monitor from a distance to ensure updates are not offensive. You can also raise some much-needed income by charging for enhanced listings. 

Accessability

With any work for Town Councils includes the necessity to make the website accessible. We build this into all council websites and give users the chance to change font size, colouring of the background and more. this also means the navigation has to be big and easy to read. No small fonts and confusing colours. 

town council Testimonial

Here is what they said about working with us:

'We Are Chain have been very easy to work with from start to finish of designing our new website. They are responsive and always on hand to answer any questions. Their experience with designing Town Council websites was also useful, to help us build a user friendly site for the whole community.

If you work for a Town Council and would like to explore the options of having a new website or indeed a revamp of the old one then get in touch.