Ecopixel worked with the Poultney Recreation Commission to reimagine their website and vastly expand the site to include the many outdoor recreation activities offered in their region. The Commission fills the role of recreation department for this Vermont town.
The colorful and dynamic new website shows off Poultney’s fun summertime programming for children, as well as the many top-notch year-round outdoor offerings in the area for locals and visitors alike — including mountain biking, hiking and water sports.
The previous website relied on lengthy, mobile-unfriendly PDFs to summarize the town’s summer programs and events. Now the content is available in easy-to-navigate and easy-to-read web pages. The content is easier to find now, as well, because we improved the search engine optimization (SEO) of the website. We integrated Yoast SEO into the site so website editors can customize their metadata for optimal external search results.
Website editors can now easily shine a spotlight on upcoming events. The events are automatically called out on the home page and a new Special Events page lets visitors browse all the events happening in the year.
The most striking addition to the website is an Outdoor Recreation Guide. Visitors can browse recreational opportunities by activity such as hiking, camping, mountain biking and more. With a click, they can see all the options in the region where they can participate in that activity. The guide is filled with photos and illustrated with icons. The guide complements new town branding, a printed recreation map, and travel center wall display.
The Ecopixel team worked closely with the Poultney Recreation website committee to determine the new content needed to build the Outdoor Recreation Guide and how to organize that content so it would be easily discovered by site visitors. We very thoroughly outlined the new site and re-worked the outline together until we had a logical content structure that provides visitors what they need to know.
Our team also built the new website with an emphasis on accessibility. The site features high-contrast colors, larger fonts, proper heading hierarchy and alternative text for screen readers. We also allow the website user to access more text-based content instead of relying on PDF documents, which usually are not accessible. The site was built and carefully checked by Ecopixel to meet WCAG 2.1 level AA standards at launch time.
The website at www.poultneyrecreation.com is an exciting new resource to get residents and visitors outdoors and active. Get in touch with us to learn how we could transform your town’s recreation department website, as well!