New Design for County Web Site

After a year of stakeholder engagements, research, planning, brainstorming, and site building, the county’s web team working with an internal cross functional team and others endeavored to reimagine the digital experience for Bruce County residents and visitors. There were some high level goals for the new site;

• Improved visibility for our top content (see our front page search tool and tiles)
• Highlight and promote important stuff (http://www.brucecounty.on.ca/business)
• Put the user at the center of essentially every design and functionality decision that we make

We attempted to realize these goals across the site in a number of ways, but fresh off our launch we’d like to highlight some key things you can discover as you start to explore the new brucecounty.on.ca

We have a New Brand

In 2016 the County of Bruce launched a new brand with the ambitious goal of providing a unifying voice for the county in a bold way. The county site was meant to be one of the first major touchpoints to showcase the new brand, so we have the graphic elements like the logo and star field:

But we also have professionally crafted text that aims to speak in our brand voice. A particularly strong example of this can be found on the Museum and Library page:

Our museum is the life story of Bruce County - on display, interactive and brought to life through events and learning opportunities year round. Experience our culture and our legacy here.

You can also find some brand resources like our various style guides on our media page here.

The County is Unique

As we constructed the brand we did some research on how the county was perceived and one of the findings that stood out was that the county is unique both in people and in geography. The county is home to an amazing shoreline, the rugged peninsula, and the farmlands of the bread basket area.

The site aims to educate users about our unique geography with interactive mapping across the site. You can access our GIS mapping and detailed information on the maps page, but we also have maps of our highways and trails system here, or you can find maps of our landfill sites forests and parks on the environment page. For planning maps, plus zoning and official plan information you can explore our Municipal land use maps and information by visiting the land use section.

Here's Something Interesting

The research also indicated some perceptions that people had about the county that we feel may not be fully accurate, so we built some pages that try to paint a quick picture about the county in a more accurate way. If you went to the By the Numbers page you will see some data provided by the economic development division that tells a pretty good story about the county:

You can learn more about the county and the organization on similar pages: Environment by the Numbers, Museum and Library by the numbers, Agriculture by the Numbers, and more to come.

One More Cool Thing

Check out the map of the Saugeen River Access points here. It's a small piece of content but it represents some of the things that we’re excited about that the web site can help accomplish:

• Encourages discovery and exploration of both the organization and our geography
• Extends the idea of the explorer brand and brings it to life in a real way
• Leverages technology to better serve our public users, and
• Highlights our strengths of the environment and the natural beauty of the landscape.

Tell us What you think

We'd love to know your thoughts, either use the Talk to Us form or email at info@brucecounty.on.ca