Responsive, Accessible, and Engaging Site Aligns with Evolving Constituent Expectations

Martin County, Florida

Client Info

Martin County, Florida draws visitors and residents with its stunning coastline, parks, and attractions. Their website needed to serve two distinct purposes: showcase the area's beauty for tourism while providing critical services for its 161,000 residents. The county faced challenges with an outdated website that made it difficult to quickly share emergency updates and access government documents.

Industry

State & Local Government

Top challenge

• A need for robust search capabilities and convenient access to governmental documents under the State of Florida’s open government policy, via integration with 3rd party applications.

• A need to engage and inform residents and spark interest among tourists in all that Martin County has to offer.

• Needed an up-to-date design aesthetic that organized the visual clutter that had resulted from more and more tiles being added above the fold as new priorities and new requests for quickly accessible information emerged.

• Desired a flexible CMS that enabled content editors to efficiently create and publish content for up-to-the-minute updates and alerts.

• Integration and a cohesive brand identity among county websites.

• Ongoing assurance that the site remains in compliance with current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and ADA web accessibility standards.

Top solution

• A responsive design to meet the needs on an increasing shift to a mobile-dominant audience, along with a redesigned home page that offers a task-oriented approach and centralized access to key services and timely topics.

• An updated user experience that efficiently organized information based on user needs, allowing for fast access to the resources residents needed to access most often.

• Visually striking photography that highlights the area’s spectacular beauty and multifaceted appeal.

• The Drupal Paragraphs module that enables non technical content editors to efficiently update, revise and reconfigure pages as needed.

• Creation of a cohesive brand identity that allows for the management of multiple county websites—the Sailfish Splash Park site, the Coastal Resiliency site, the County Golf Course site, and the employee intranet—from a single dashboard.

• An ongoing support relationship with Promet Source, that ensures ADA web accessibility compliance monitoring, reporting, and remediation.

The residents of Martin County maintain a high level of civic engagement and take great pride in our community. Our county website showcases our commitment to governmental transparency and adaptation to the ever-changing world of digitalization. We are continually evaluating the ways in which users access county services, programs and information online, and leverage user feedback to adapt and improve the overall user experience. In addition, our website has also served as the critical foundation of our crisis response strategy and emergency communications for COVID-19, hurricanes and other important incidents as they arise.

Jennifer Hagedorn

Web Content Specialist, Martin County, Florida

What We Did

We revamped their website while moving it from Oracle Portal to Drupal, creating a platform that balances tourism promotion with efficient government services. The new site makes it easy for staff to post updates and for residents to find information, especially during emergencies like hurricanes or public health crises.

Fast Access to Critical Information

The redesigned homepage puts the most-needed services front and center, with a task-focused layout that helps residents quickly find what they need. During COVID-19 and hurricane seasons, this proved invaluable as visitor numbers spiked and residents relied on the site for critical updates.

Simple Updates for County Staff

Using Drupal's Paragraphs module, staff can now quickly update content, post alerts, and modify pages without technical help. The system lets them embed videos, add images, and create new pages easily—essential for keeping residents informed during emergencies.

Unified Brand Across Multiple Sites

We created a cohesive system that manages multiple county websites from one dashboard—including the Sailfish Splash Park, Coastal Resiliency site, County Golf Course, and employee intranet. This ensures consistent branding while making it easier for staff to maintain all sites.

The Result

The new site earned a 2019 Communicator Award of Distinction for its streamlined navigation and visual appeal. More importantly, it proved crucial during COVID-19, serving as the foundation of the county's crisis response strategy. The site successfully handles spikes in traffic during emergencies while making it simple for staff to post urgent updates.

User Experience

Mobile-first design
Task-based navigation
Tourism showcase

Technical Development

CMS migration
Search integration
Document management

Content Management

Paragraphs module setup
Alert system
Multi-site dashboard

Compliance & Support

ADA compliance
Emergency readiness
Ongoing maintenance

Let’s start your project

Let's create a platform that makes it easy to share critical updates and showcase your community's unique appeal, while giving your team the tools they need to respond quickly when it matters most.

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