Iowa Issues Design RFP
The City of LeClaire, Iowa has issued an RFP for the Redesign, Development and Hosting of the LeClaire, Iowa City-Wide Website. www.LeClaireIowa.gov is a modern, highly attractive and responsive web design.
The City is seeking proposals from highly qualified, experienced website development companies to design, develop and implement its public-facing website. The chosen strategic partner must be a firm that has experience in managing local government website design projects, and expertise with best practices regarding:
- successful website redesign
- information architecture
- website development and deployment/training
- website hosting
- social media integration
- search engine optimization
- providing safe, secure ecommerce and online services
- responsive design that is mobile friendly
- user-friendly administration and maintenance
The City of LeClaire, Iowa is located along the Mississippi River at the intersection of Interstate 80. We celebrate a history that began as LeClaire was established in 1834 by the brave riverboat pilots that navigated the once treacherous Upper and served as the birth place of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. The city also is the home of “Antique Archaeology”, which has gained popularity through the HISTORY channel’s show, “American Pickers”.
While our LeClaire Chamber of Commerce boasts over 100 members, LeClaire’s primary industry is Tourism, and we have been voted “Best Place to Take an Our of Town Guest” for6 years in a row by the Quad City Time Readers’ Choice Awards. We receive visitors to the “American Pickers” Studio and Museum, the Buffalo Bill Museum and Lone Star Steamer, a unique downtown shopping and dining/bar district, the Mississippi River Distilling Company, the Wide River Winery Tasting Room, one of the best locations in the continental United States to view Bald Eagles at Lock & Dam 14. We also host several events, including First Friday in our Downtown District as well as our annual Tug Fest when LeClaire takes on Port Byron, Illinois for a tug-of-war across the mighty Mississippi River that culminates in an amazing fireworks display over the river. Our levee includes a boat launch, picnic areas and Veteran’s Memorial as well as opportunities to take a Twilight River Boat cruise.
The population is currently around 4200 people, but with new housing developments, continued economic development and one of the best school districts in the state of Iowa, it is one of the fastest growing communities in the Quad City Area, which is a larger metropolitan area that consists of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa as well as Moline and Rock Island, Illinois.
Project Objectives and Goals
The primary objectives and goals of the website redesign are as follows:
- Interactive and Engaging Website – We are seeking to redesign our website to include an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that allows residents, visitors and business partners to complete their tasks quickly and easily regardless of the device they are using. The solution should also be easy to maintain for our administrators and content creators, streamline business operations and increase productivity, which will include online form processing and payments.
- Purpose of our New Website – Our new site should:
- Serve the needs of all users by letting them easily find what they are seeking, providing them with access to key services on a 24×7 basis, allowing them to share information and interact with our staff.
- Promote transparency of our local government by making it easy for us to share and post information, and for our users to find and interact with the information.
- Represent or brand our community for residents, visitors, businesses and elected officials, and showcase our community in a way that highlights why this is a great place to live, visit and do business.
- Provide a pleasant and delightful experience to all users by making it easy for them to complete their tasks or find what they want in a straightforward manner.
- Be strategic and nimble, and focus on making our content useful, interactive and engaging. We know that things will change in the future, and we want our site to adapt and remain relevant.
- Customers – We take a broad customer-centric view of our community since we view anyone who visits our website or community as a customer. Our website is our digital front door and our goal is to focus on the needs of our customers, and on improving our interactions and engagement with our customer base.
- Strategic Partnership – We want a vendor partner who understands the local government market, who will help guide us to where we want to be today, and provide ongoing services and support to keep us there in the future.
- Research Based Design – We want a site that meets the unique needs of our community, and are not looking for a cookie-cutter or templated solution. Our vendor should employ a strategic research-based and data-driven process to gather input, define expectations and design a consistent, user-friendly navigation framework for the website that meets the needs of all users.
Proposal due by May 3, 2017 to:
City of LeClaire, Iowa
C/O: The City Administrator
325 Wisconsin, LeClaire, IA 52753,
Edwin N. Choate: echoate@leclaireiowa.gov
Phone: 563-289-6004
