Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Digital Services topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Wapello County website review highlights mobile traffic and upcoming accessibility deadline
Summary
Neapolitan Labs reviewed Wapello County's website, reporting heavy mobile use, top pages for the jail roster, and flagging federal accessibility requirements that take effect in April 2027 for smaller jurisdictions.
Brian McMillan of Neapolitan Labs presented a year-end review of the Wapello County website at the board of supervisors' final scheduled meeting of 2024, saying the site has about 68,000 users and roughly 135,000 visits year-to-date and that roughly two-thirds of visits come from mobile devices.
McMillan, whose firm built the county site and maintains its content-management system, said the site recorded about 236,000 page views and an average session length of about three minutes. He told the board the site's two most-viewed pages are the jail and inmate-roster pages, which together account for roughly 92,000–93,000 page views year-to-date.
The presentation included a review of the site back end — Mindshift Lab, Neapolitan Labs' content management platform — and the site's features for department-level updates, alerts, agendas and minutes, and searchable content. "We built your site in a way that I think checked 95% of those accessibility boxes when we built it," McMillan said, referring to accessibility standards, but he added the county should review the site for the remaining items.
McMillan flagged a new federal accessibility requirement he said will be enforced starting in April 2027 for communities or counties with populations of 50,000 or less. "I think it's something that would take just a small fix or it's something that would be a little bit more involved, but we certainly want to work with you to make sure you meet those requirements," he said, offering follow-up review and training for county staff.
He also recommended a few optional upgrades that other counties have adopted, including online employment applications, password-protected employee portals, and monthly automated traffic reports for staff. McMillan noted most organic traffic to the county site comes via Google, and that the election-specific site the firm maintains shows large traffic spikes around primaries and general elections.
Kelly, county staff who worked with Neapolitan Labs on the site, was listed as a point of contact for follow-up training and communications. McMillan said Neapolitan Labs will coordinate with Kelly on an accessibility review in early 2025 and that updating landing-page videos would be included in the annual maintenance fee if the county supplies new footage.
The board asked no substantive questions during the presentation and thanked McMillan for the update.
