Excellence in user experience has earned the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s municipal website redesign a gold medal at the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals’  MarCom Awards.

The site launched this spring and focuses on meeting community needs through extensive public engagement to make it more accessible, responsive, and user-friendly.

The new site design was guided by public input from surveys, interviews and usability testing, as well as feedback from municipal staff and Council. The feedback also helped rearrange the hierarchy of information, to make the site more intuitive, and refocused its content to ensure the key audience is the residents, visitors and second homeowners hoping to source information from the site quickly and easily. Engaging also helped recraft the user experience so the site is easier to use with a screen reader, selects colours with contrast for readability, and contains language plain enough to make municipal process clear. Whistler.ca receives over 1.5 million views from 570,000 users each year.

“This award recognizes our commitment to learning from our community to provide Whistler with better service,” said Mayor Jack Crompton. “It is an exciting outcome, but also a launching point. Technology is fast-paced and presents a constant learning curve that both staff and Council are committed to as we work to make our governance equitable, transparent and clear for our community.”

The site navigation and page groupings were updated to reflect where users expect to find information. The search function was improved. Most of the content was rewritten to reduce unnecessary volume and make it easier to find important information in fewer clicks, and page design was simplified to avoid visual clutter. Additionally, a series of accessibility improvements were made to increase visual contrast and make it easier for screen readers to navigate content.

Whistler’s website redesign is one of several key community engagement initiatives of this council term, including the seasonal Add Your Voice community engagement events, Coffee with Council and the library’s Borrow a Councillor program. The RMOW has also launched a new committee and working group structure, digital budget surveying, redesigned its municipal engagement site (engage.whistler.ca) and hosted focused events on Creekside West and other municipal park projects during this term.