You're Pushing My Buttons Now!

Here is some great stuff on the "quality information" front...specifically, downtown web sites. In quickly checking out some of the most highly rated city sites, many excellent ideas popped up.
(Note: I didn't see any correlation between city size and web site quality; some big city sites are terrible and some small city sites are excellent. Achieving quality seems to be a vision thing.) 

Augusta GA is a clean-looking, easy-to-read site. Buttons on the mid-left are a customer's delight: Request a service (fix a pothole, traffic light isn't working); Online maps including real estate parcels; and Notify me (a way to get on an email list for any one of dozens of city meetings, threads about initiatives, etc.) There's a little "Spotlight" tease, some news items, and a plug for the city's award for being in the top 100 places to live in 2009, according to www.relocateamerica.com. Nice!

Fresno CA has a crisp, easy to navigate layout, with main menu buttons of For Residents,  For Businesses,  For Visitors, Government,  Discover Fresno, and News. On the For Business page, there is a complete set up to get started in business in Fresno, get your taxes and licenses set up, and to get business advice and loans. Many other great topics are on the pull-down menu.

Downtown Boulder is not the City of Boulder's main governmental site, so it concentrates on dining, shopping, visitors, events, and business. There is a page on downtown research–a compendium of studies done over the years. All in one place.  There is also a BID (Business Impovement District) in Boulder, and a page that compares the two organizations.

Downtown Wilmington NC has a lot of nice whistles and bells. They are not the official city site, but they do cover nicely Doing Business as well as living, working, events and others. They make good use of maps on many informational pages.

Louisville KY's main city site has simple buttons on the home page–Residents, Visitors, Business, Government, Online Services, and Programs / Initiatives. The latter button goes to a single page with links to all the major initiatives throughout the city.  Gold Star for this one!

A marketing guru got loose on the Alexandria VA city site. WONDERFUL! The Planning and Zoning Department page is a fountain of information, very well arranged by customer interests, not by the department generating the information. NOW we're talking transparency in  government. This page makes the reader think "this city is DOING things!"