City of College Station Blog

By Bobbie Lehrmann, Assistant Director of Public Communications

Our new website is live!

After months of planning, design, and development, the City of College Station has introduced a new and improved website featuring enhanced search capabilities and functionality. The updated service hub is more than just a digital facelift; it’s a powerful tool that makes interacting with your local government easier, faster, and more accessible.

While the new site is live, it will never truly be finished. We will continually update content, refine navigation, and explore new tools to make the experience even better.

A city website should evolve with its community. Every change we make will keep residents at the forefront, ensuring the website remains service-based, intuitive, and easy to use. It’s your digital city hall, and our service-based approach ensures that your needs are always the priority.

We worked closely with our vendor, GHD Digital, to implement its dynamic flagship platform, GovStack, with citizen feedback guiding the redesign from the start. Residents played a crucial role in testing the draft sitemap and structure in May as part of an extensive navigation menu study to shape the development of the website’s backbone. That input helped us gain a better understanding of how people access information.

We also integrated many of the features requested in the 2025 Citizen Survey to ensure the final product reflects the community’s priorities. The result is a modern, user-friendly website to serve College Station residents with clarity and convenience.

Here are some of the key features to ensure you get the most from the website, such as the Enhanced Search that helps you find what you need faster, the AI Chatbot that provides prompt answers and guidance, and the Accessibility Widget that ensures everyone can access the website.

Enhanced Search

We’ve upgraded search functionality with Cludo, a smarter tool that helps you find exactly what you’re looking for fast. Cludo provides relevant results even if you don’t type the exact wording, and it suggests helpful options as you type. Cludo also surfaces the most popular and important pages first.

Best of all, it continuously learns from user interactions, improving results over time.

AI Chatbot

Another fabulous new feature is the AI-powered chatbot to provide answers or guide you to resources promptly. A chatbot was among the most highly requested enhancements by residents seeking faster and easier ways to access online information.

With the chatbot, you can navigate directly to relevant pages without searching manually and access resources and forms quickly. You can also receive step-by-step guidance for frequently used services and connect with City staff.

Like the search function, the chatbot continually learns and improves. It’s another way to ensure the digital City Hall is built around your feedback.

Accessibility Widget

We want everyone to have access to the website. Features in the Accessibility Widget ensure the site is accessible to residents with visual, cognitive, or motor disabilities, while also providing users with more control over their browsing experience.

With a simple click, you can:

• Adjust text size, spacing, and contrast for better readability
• Switch to dark mode or high-contrast mode
• Highlight links and headings for easier scanning
• Enable a dyslexia-friendly font
• Navigate entirely with your keyboard
• Pause animations or moving content

Municipalities everywhere face the challenge of keeping up with evolving digital expectations. By modernizing its online presence, College Station ensures that residents can easily, securely, and reliably interact with their city government.

The redesign represents more than a new look. It reflects our ongoing commitment to accessibility, engagement, and service.

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