Best Government Websites: Arkansas.gov

The government website for the state of Arkansas took User Centered Design (UCD) to another level with its Best of the Web award winning website.  This is what I like about Arkansas.gov:

  • They clearly identified and segmented their target audiences: Parents & Families, Citizens, Business Owners, State Employees
  • They created a modern, visually pleasing, aesthetic design that features an Arkansas landscape panorama
  • They featured a search box with suggestions and trending searches
  • They produced a mobile app for self-serving citizens and feature that app on their website
  • They provide a feedback suggestion box so they can continue to seek improvement
  • They have an interactive map to help people find jobs, services, offices, parks, and meetings near them
  • They integrate social media such as tweets and flickr images

The web designers did a bang up job with Arkansas.gov.

arkansas.gov

This is the technology stack and spec profile for Arkansas.gov according to builtwith.com:

  • Apache web server (Apache 2.2)
  • IIS web server (IS 6)
  • SPF email service
  • Comodo SSL certificate
  • Expression engine content management system (yuck!)
  • iAPPS (integrated CMS, analytics, and eCommerce solution)
  • PHP
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint (probably for the State Employee Intranet)
  • ASP.NET
  • ASP.NET Ajax
  • Pingdom
  • CrazyEgg
  • Google Analytics
  • jQuery
  • HTML5
  • Modernizr (targets specific browser functionality)
  • Facebook for Websites (for social media integration)
  • Facebook SDK (enables Graph API via JavaScript)
  • Twitter page embeds
  • jQuery (jQuery 1.8.3)
  • jQuery Cycle
  • Skrollr (paralass scrolling library)
  • Google hosted libraries (jQuery UI)
  • DataTables (jQuery plugin to extend tables)
  • BootstrapCDN (content delivery network)
  • GStatic Google Static Content (offloads static content to reduce bandwidth, increase performance)
  • jQueryCDN (Amazon S3 content delivery network)
  • AJAX Libraries API
  • Twitter CDN (content sourced from Twitter)
  • CloudFrount (integrates with Amazon Web Services to distribute content for users with low latency for high data transfer speeds)
  • RawGit (serves RAW files from GitHub with the right Content Type headers)
  • AddThis
  • Feedbackify
  • Font Awesome
  • Imgix
  • GetSiteControl
  • Viewport Meta
  • Apple Mobile Web Clips
  • Twitter Bootstrap
  • CSS
  • Conditional Comments
  • WAI-ARIA
  • Ubuntu operating system
  • CentOS
  • Min Width
  • Max Width

 


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