Our work

We had the privilege of designing the new website for the City of Plainwell, the town where our business is based.

The City of Plainwell

The new site puts everything a resident looks for one click from the homepage, and gives city staff a simple way to keep it current themselves.

65 pages rebuilt and moved over
2,111 documents from the last ten years, searchable
749 meetings with their agendas, packets and minutes
13 sections city staff post to themselves

Visit the new City of Plainwell website

The new City of Plainwell homepage: a drone photo of City Hall and the dam, with search and six quick links

What we built

Search inside every document

A resident can type a word like "chickens" and find every council agenda and packet that mentions it, filtered by board and year. The search reads the text inside the PDFs, not just their titles.

Search results for chickens, showing City Council agendas and packets with the word highlighted

Every meeting in one place

All 749 meetings can be filtered by board, year or keyword, each with its agenda, packet and minutes. Cancelled meetings are marked in red, and the regular schedule for every board sits beside the list.

The Find a meeting page, with filters for board, year and keyword, and cancelled meetings marked in red

One calendar for the whole city

Council, commissions and boards share a calendar with community events like bulk trash pickup and early voting. Residents can submit their own events through a form.

The October calendar, with public meetings in blue and community events in brown

A posting tool city staff run themselves

Staff post meetings, news, alerts, calendar events, election details, job openings, bids, forms, water quality reports, police blotters and the staff directory from one screen. An alert they post shows across the top of every page until the date they choose.

The staff posting tool, with a list of sections down the left and the alert banner section open

Made for phones

Residents often check the site on a phone, so every page works at phone size, and a button to call City Hall stays at the bottom of the screen.

The City of Plainwell homepage on a phone

Also on the site

Elections

An election box appears on the homepage 90 days before each election, with early voting dates and polling information.

Accessibility

Built to WCAG 2.1 AA, the standard in the federal ADA web rule.

Forms that reach the right person

Each form, from event submissions to records requests, goes to the right person at City Hall.

Plainwell Web is a private business and is not affiliated with the City of Plainwell.

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