The city of Kent website will get a new look and be easier to navigate when it’s launched in the fall.

The City Council’s Operations Committee, as well as the full council, approved a $117,519 contract earlier in March with California-based Vision Internet to develop and implement the new website.

“Our website was last updated in 2009, and industry experts say the standard lifespan for a website is four years, so we will get a redesign (in four years) as part of this as well as a new web design,” said Michelle Wilmot, city community and public affairs director, at the March 1 committee meeting. “We anticipate a lot of great changes – more usable for us and more importantly, to meet visitors’ needs and drastically improve our communications with the community.”

About 900,000 visitors use the city’s website a year, so it’s a very important communication tool, Wilmot said.

City staff looked at 16 website providers but wanted a company that has worked with other city government websites.

Vision Internet has worked with more than 700 government sites across the country and provides guidance about how to design a site based on where customers go currently on the site.

“Now it is set up by department (Public Works, Police, etc …),” Wilmot said. “They set up content with the visitor in mind.”

Wilmot further explained how that would work.

“We have a lot of content provided by Public Works, but the page might not say Public Works, but maybe road projects or garbage or water and sewer rather than the Public Works umbrella,” she said.

The new site will automatically size for mobile devices. More than 50 percent of city traffic comes from iPads or cellphones.

“I’m very much looking forward to this,” said Councilwoman Dana Ralph, who serves on the Operations Committee. “Currently it’s a very cumbersome process for our employees to update things and post them. We are absolutely ready for a new website.”

The new site will have fewer pages to make it more user-friendly.

“We have over 1,500 pages on our website and the industry standard says it should be between 600 and 800 pages because more pages makes it harder to find the information you are looking for,” Wilmot said.

After the site launch, residents should find it easier to report potholes online or possibly through an app. People also will be able to sign up to get e-alerts from the city about topics they are interested in.