The New Look to our Website

Why Change?

Since going live with our brand new website in December 2009 we have been looking at the feedback you have given us about the site. While the majority of resident’s comments have been positive, a number of people have suggested ways in which we could make your experience of our website easier.

On the back of these comments and at no additional cost, we have changed the way the website looks without losing any of the information or services.

What’s New?

The main changes you will see on the website will be on our homepage.

Before, our homepage was very simple and allowed you to simply search for what you were looking for or use the section tabs. Now we have given you a larger variety of options to find what you are looking for while still keeping the search and section tabs.  We have also made it easier for you find out what is happening in Swale by adding our latest news to the home page and adding in an Events Calendar. The Events Calendar not only contains all the dates of meetings being held by the Council but also events that are being run in the community.

On the homepage you will also find “Do It Online” and “Popular Topics” sections. The “Do It Online” section will make it even easier for you to interact with us when reporting problems or paying your council tax. And the “Popular Topics” section will help keep you informed of useful and important services being run by the Council.

At the top right hand corner of the website you will also find the option to change the way you view the site. There are three options available to you:

• Normal
• Wide
• Mobile

We have created a wide option for residents who use larger screens; this means they will be able to fit more of the website on their screen. We have also made a mobile device site which is specifically designed for people who want to look at our website on the go whilst using a mobile phone or tablet computer.

Due to popular demand we have brought back an A to Z of services and also introduced a popular services list, which shows what residents are looking for most on our website and what they are asking our customer services staff in our call centre. This can all be found at the bottom of every page on the website along with our contact details.

Your Browser

Because of the way that web browsers are changing and getting better we have designed our website to work best in modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 or 9, Firefox 5, Google Chrome, Opera 11 or Safari 5. If you are still using an out of date version of your browser you won’t be able to get the experience of using our website, and would advise you to update your browser. A number of options are given below:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 for Windows Vista and 7(Visit the Microsoft website)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 for XP (Visit the Microsoft website)
• Google Chrome (Visit the Chrome website)
• Mozilla Firefox 5.0 (Visit the Firefox website)
• Opera 11.10 (Visit the Opera website)
• Apple Safari 5 (Visit the Apple website)

What’s Next?

Although we have introduced this new look, we are always looking to improve the way you can use our site.  For instance we will be looking to add a rating system to all of our pages so you can tell us what you think about the content on that page.

If you have any comments about the new look site or want to suggest any possible improvements please let us know what you think.

Send your comments or suggestions to simonwhittle@swale.gov.uk.