Aurora aldermen have approved spending more than $600,000 for a new city website designed to last at least five years.
The City Council on Tuesday night approved a $605,242 contract with Chicago-based CityBase, Inc. to develop a website officials said would be an upgrade from what the city has now, and will be unique to Aurora.
Aurora’s current website was created in 2016. There are 19,000 pages on it, and city officials said in April alone, there were more than 200,000 page views by more than 80,000 users.
During the pandemic, the website saw traffic increase two-fold. And more than 50% of people are accessing the website from a mobile device.
City officials have said people want a website that is equally accessible from all platforms – just as good on a mobile device as it is on a computer.
Officials are looking for a website that would allow people to do everything they could do in person at City Hall. They also said the site should show the city for people who might want to move to Aurora, or businesses that might want to locate to the city.
The process of looking at the site began in May through July 2020, when the city used its third-party company, Marketplace.city, to collect 50 companies which could do the job. City officials whittled that down to six.
Then the effort was put on hold during the pandemic.
In late 2021, officials started the process up again, putting out a notice to see who might still be interested. Officials then whittled the list down to three.
The city chose CityBase because it is local, based in Chicago, and due to the amount of work the company has done. It has developed the websites for Denver and Indianapolis, and has done the finance department work for both New York and Chicago.
The company is particularly skilled at payment collection online, in part because of its enhanced security protocols, officials said.
The $605,242 contract will be for five years, and will include ongoing maintenance of the site as it is developed.
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