After months of preparation and work from County staff, a brand new and improved Pittsylvania County website will go live beginning on June 15. County staff chose to create a new website to improve the mobile experience, streamline the site organization, and add significantly more content about County services and operations.
“We are extremely pleased with the added functionality, site appearance on desktop and mobile devices, and the added information about what County government offers to residents, businesses, visitors, and organizations,” said County Public Relations Manager, Caleb Ayers. “This new website is a solid, well-organized foundation upon which we can continue to expand the amount of information we share about County operations, projects, and services.”
During the 2021 calendar year, the Pittsylvania County website had more than 813,000 total page views from 264,000 different users, making the website one of the County’s most important communication channels. Over 41% of those users viewed the County website on a mobile device, which shows the importance of being able to customize the website so those users can easily find the right information.
With the goal of enhancing the mobile experience and improving overall design, Pittsylvania County issued a request for proposals for website design and hosting services in June of 2021. Out of the 14 firms that responded, Granicus, a respected digital government company that hosts more than 2,500 local government websites, demonstrated the most value, scalability, and design flexibility. The total website redesign cost $37,500, all of which was paid for through federal CARES Act funds.
Some of the specific factors that led the Pittsylvania County team to select Granicus were:
- Reasonable price
- Mobile-specific editing
- Flexible and modern designs
- Convenient tools like address lookup and service finder
- Proven track record with excellent government websites of all sizes
- Facility reservations and online payments, two tools that Pittsylvania County plans to roll out after the initial site launch.
Behind the scenes over the last year, the County Public Relations team has been working closely with departments and organizations across the County to create content about a variety of County services, departments, and operations that either were not on the website at all or were under-represented. Users were frequently searching information about many of these services and procedures, but there was none on the County website. Some common examples include things like marriage license and concealed handgun permit applications, County jail information, and details about building permits and inspections needed for particular projects.
As the site launches during the morning of June 15, there will be some crossover where some visitors will see the old site and others will see the new site. By June 16 all visitors should see the new site.
Some other important items that website users should know:
- Any and all subscriptions for notifications through the Pittsylvania County website have already been transferred to the County’s new communications platform. Complete our signup form if you aren’t receiving notifications you signed up to receive, want to update your preferences, or would like to subscribe for the first time.
- Anyone who has created an account in the Pittsylvania County website will lose that account once the new site goes live. These accounts were used for things like job applications and to manage subscriptions. There is no way to transfer an account. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Job applicants will be able to create a new account on the new site once it goes live.
- The URL structure is changing from numbers to a breadcrumb trail. As an example: the url for the County newsroom will change from pittsylvaniacountyva.gov/620/newsroom to pittsylvaniacountyva.gov/government/newsroom. For some of the most popular pages we are setting up redirects so that the old urls will work for the new pages, but you may use a saved link and find that it no longer works. Although the site is easy to navigate, should you have any difficulty locating something please don’t hesitate to contact the Pittsylvania County webmaster.
- The County will not be able to transfer every news article and document that is in our current website over to the new site. We are migrating all news articles released in 2022 and all documents that are still needed. Agendas and minutes from meetings before 2022 can be found in the Pittsylvania County Laserfiche web portal.
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