San Carlos, California Issues RFP for New Website

About San Carlos, California

The City of San Carlos, California is seeking Proposals from qualified firms to complete a Website Redesign Needs Assessment. The Needs Assessment will outline the vision, goals, and key elements of a new website/ intranet for the City of San Carlos. It will identify innovative and cutting edge methods for serving customers and communicating the City’s message.

San Carlos is a General Law City of over 29,000 residents that encompasses five and a half square miles and is located exactly halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. With excellent geography and livability, it strikes a rare balance between small town charm and big city access. Like other communities on the Peninsula, San Carlos residents enjoy high property values and household incomes.

The City’s website was last updated in 2009. Although the website was an improvement from the previous version, after seven years, it is now out of date. The current website is burdensome to users due to an overwhelming number of pages, which are difficult to navigate, The City wants a modern, cutting-edge website with features that will make it user-friendly to residents, businesses and visitors.

The City Council’s 2016-2017 Strategic Plan includes Public Outreach, Community Engagement and Social Media. One of the objectives under this goal is to, “redesign the City website to make it easier for the community to locate desired information and engage them.” Funding for this strategic goal was included in the 2016/17, 2017/18 capital improvement budget.

Needs Assessment

A successful Needs Assessment will assist the City in identifying key constituencies’ current and future uses of the website. The Needs Assessment may include the tasks outlined below. Based on professional experience, Consultants are encouraged to identify any suggested modifications or additions to the list of tasks below.

• Outreach to staff, residents, community members and elected officials to understand how the current website is being used and anticipate how it will be used in the future. This process should identify the strategy for managing the different channels that constituents use for information. Outreach may include focus group meetings, surveys, interviews or other methods determined by the Consultant to gather information.

• Analyze the current website user trends and patterns through analytics. Recommend performance metrics that should be used to measure the success of the new website.

• Identify the current roadblocks that prevent the City’s current website from being:
  • accessible (to City staff and community users);
  • user-friendly (to City staff and community users);
  • consistent (with the City’s message and communications strategy);
  • current;
  • informational;
  • visually consistent; and
  • organized.

• Prioritize the needs, wants, and expectations of the City’s website.

Deliverables

• A professional document that summarizes the items described above and includes all of the raw data that is collected. This document should clearly convey the needs, wants, and expectations that must be taken into account in the redesign of the City’s website. This document, or the contents of it, will be included as a resource in a future RFP for website redesign services and should provide sufficient detail for a qualified website developer to understand the desired outcomes of the redesign process.

Proposal due on July 13, 2016 to:

City of San Carlos
City Clerk, Second Floor 600 Elm Street
San Carlos, CA 94070