Northbrook Park District (the District) launched their new website (www.nbparks.org) that was designed and built by Clarity Partners. Since December 2016, the District and Clarity have been working together to improve and modernize the District’s website. To better serve the park patrons, Clarity designed and implemented the new website with cleaner navigation, powerful search capabilities, and a more organized information structure to help site visitors more easily find relevant information. Clarity created a more user-friendly and modern design in addition to an entirely new administrative content strategy using a WordPress content management system (CMS). Clarity also transitioned the District’s website hosting providers to WPEngine, an industry-leader in WordPress hosting services.
With the transition to a CMS, the District staff now have greater access and control over their content, reducing the time needed to publish content to the live site. Clarity’s innovative approach to developing the CMS gives administrators greater control over content and page design – the flexible, modular content system virtually eliminates static, “one-size-fits-all” templates and frees the internal admin to make design choices specific to each program’s content needs. This functionality also provides more internal control over design and functionality, which will continue to be a crucial asset as future needs are identified.
Clarity worked closely with the District’s core team of marketing, communications, and technical professionals to plan, design, and develop a site built from flexible content modules. The core team categorized all types of park-related information, including programs, locations, amenities, news, and events, in order to facilitate users’ ability to find relevant information and standardize the way in which the District’s staff add content to the site. The new structure allows admins to cross-reference content which, in turn, allows site visitors to discover new park offerings. Additionally, the new site links any registration page to a third-party registration system. This increases the ease for site visitors to find a program of interest and complete the registration process, without having to duplicate searches in multiple systems.
About Northbrook Park District
The Northbrook Park District maintains 22 parks, comprised of community parks, neighborhood parks, play lots, and passive parks. The Park District provides a full range of indoor and outdoor activities. Major recreation programs include ice skating, visual arts, music, performing arts, preschool, summer camps, child care before and after school, aquatics, and athletics. Special events include Winter Carnival, Park Fest (Tuesday night concerts in the park), Touch-A-Truck, Northbrook Autumnfest, Northbrook-On-lce and other seasonal events.
About Clarity Partners
Clarity Partners is a Chicago-based, full-service management and information technology consulting firm that specializes in delivering comprehensive solutions to complex public sector and non-profit challenges. We provide management consulting, enterprise performance management, application development, website design and development, cloud solutions, project management, and IT staffing services to a diverse mix of businesses across the full spectrum of industries.