Saturday, June 7, 2014

City's "three clicks and you're there" website needs work...

During my report on the Historic Resource Preservation Board to the City Commission, I pointed out that there were three vacancies on our seven person board. I later find out that two members' terms were about to expire. So to print out a volunteer board application to give to someone interested in continuing on the board, I went to print one out from the city's website.

You get to the home page. There is no link to "Advisory Boards" there so you have to hit the "City Hall" link - as if that is intuitive. Then you see at the top of the list of potential links along the left hand side of the page "Advisory Boards". After clicking that, there is a cheery question below the first paragraph on the page that asks: "Interested in serving? Click here to learn more. And you come to a page that looks like this.
After reading a lot of irrelevant information, if you are looking for an application in answer to the question "Interested in serving?", you might chance to see an Application link at the bottom of the box in the upper right hand corner. If you click on that, BEWARE. You are taken to what can best be described as Dante's Inferno of web pages. 

At the top of this page you see a title saying "Forms and Spec Sheets". There must be at least one hundred (I didn't bother to count) of every Lake Worth city form imaginable from all the city departments. Remember, we are on a mission here to find a form because we are "Interested in serving?" At this point, if you don't throw up your hands and check the latest on Facebook instead, you have to read down the entire page until you get to the bottom. 
There, the second item from the bottom is the Holy Grail - what we have been searching for. This is what you get when you click on the Advisory Board Application

Eureka! You are there. I count six clicks to get there. And we wonder why we don't have more applications for advisory boards?