County to revamp online presence

CELINA - Brand It Marketing has been hired to revamp Mercer County government's outdated website and department pages.

County commissioners hired the Rockford firm for $9,750 to modernize the site hosted on a county server to make it user-friendly, visually appealing and illustrative of Mercer County. Brand It Marketing was also tasked with allowing for a branded consistency across all department websites, create a sitewide search engine to ease navigation and ensure the site can be viewed on phone, tablets and computers.

"Some of our department heads want to improve accessibility, access to information. Some are pursuing online bill-paying so they're modernizing … the website," county commissioner Greg Homan told the newspaper.

A group of department heads recommended Brand It Marketing after reviewing multiple vendors, Homan said. So too did county computer system manager Todd Highley, according to a resolution approved by commissioners this month.

Department heads are being asked to participate in the project and have the option to have their pages rebranded as well.

Mercer County Board of Elections Director Laura Bruns informed board members during this week's regular meeting about the process.

"Basically the (county website) has a banner at the top and then tabs for all the different offices," Bruns explained. "It was an idea of several elected officials that they wanted to make everything more consistent across all the different offices. All of the websites have a different look to them."

Board of elections members then moved to participate in the rebranding.

"In this day and age, you know, I get frustrated if a site's not easy to use, if it's not easy to navigate, and it sounds to me like the whole objective here is to make the county website easier to navigate," board member Craig Klopfleisch pointed out.