Sylvania officials consider a more mobile-friendly Web site

Sylvania officials are considering redoing their city's Web site to make it more compatible for mobile devices. THE BLADE Enlarge | Buy This Photo

Sylvania City Council members are still looking at options to update the city's Web site to make it more accessible for smart phone users.

At last week's Employee & Community Relations committee meeting, members voted unanimously to issue a recommendation to look into new options for updating the site. The next regular meeting is scheduled for Monday.

“The Web site that we have now is not really mobile compatible,” city information technology manager Mike Tansey said at the meeting. “The life of our current site is coming to an end.”

In July, members of council discussed the issue and referred the project to the employee and community relations committee. The current Web site was designed five years ago, before many users accessed the site from mobile devices.

Mr. Tansey suggested the committee issue a call for cost estimates for the re-design.

“We're going to have to eventually do this whether we want to or not,” he said, adding that the Sylvania Area Chamber of Commerce recently worked with an outside company to design a mobile app. Concerns about staying relevant and up-to-date with changing technology was part of the discussion.

“I'm in favor of improving our Web site,” Mr. Tansey said. Many of the mobile visits to the City of Sylvania's Web site include those from Apple devices. However, many people are still accessing the information in traditional ways.

“We still have far more desktops than mobiles,” he said.

Contact Kelly McLendon at kmclendon@theblade.com or 419-206-0356 or on Twitter at @MyTownSylvania.