Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, and its official website receives thousands of visitors every month. From housing to business support and permit applications, oaklandca.gov offers citizens a vast range of services and an extensive content library that is continuously updated and expanded.

Iterative Process

The work for the City of Oakland's website redesign was divided between Goat and Exygy, one of our partner agencies based in California. Together, our teams have been delivering continuous improvements to the website following an iterative approach. Exygy was responsible for the visuals and overall direction, while our internal development team offered all the necessary technical expertise to bring these improvements to life, whilst ensuring the live website remained stable and secure throughout.

Accessibility

Making the website easy to navigate, accessible and inclusive is paramount. In addition to enhancing the user experience, our development team applied its expertise to ensure the platform is compliant with the WCAG 2.1 level AA of accessibility.

Outcomes

Redeveloped navigation

Our teams overhauled the website's navigation to improve surfacing of relevant pages. The new menu offers higher customizability, while improving keyboard accessibility functions and screen reader compatibility.

On-the-fly translation

We delivered a new and streamlined menu to handle on-the-fly translation for the entire website. By leveraging the Google Translate javascript plugin we optimized the website's performance while delivering higher-quality translations.

Localized adjustments

Some areas of the website required specific and detailed improvements. Our team executed substantial work on some of the most critical pages such as Services, Meetings and Events. We've enriched the user experience on each one of these pages by designing and implementing new local components and custom-made features.

Consistent and accessible components

The technical audit revealed that throughout the website, some of the central visual styles were inconsistent, negatively impacting the user experience and brand cohesiveness. To address this issue, our team brought all components and features in line with the visual guidelines. Buttons, lists, paragraph styles, icons, and other main structural elements that constitute a solid ground for a cohesive website are now in harmony across the board.

Ongoing partner agency relationship

The iterative work coordinated between us and Exygy ensures the website receives timely updates, and content editors have the tools they need to keep the website relevant, easy to navigate and accessible around the clock.
When it comes to partnering with other agencies, Goat takes a pragmatic and attentive approach, with clear lines of communication and a healthy respect for each other’s working methods and processes at all times. Our approach guarantees a strong working relationship that can be primarily focussed on the task at hand.