The City of Lawrence website is one of the busiest front doors to your local government. You might come here to pay a bill, find a recreation program, understand a construction project, check a meeting agenda or learn what the City is doing about an issue you care about.
Whatever brought you here, our job is to help you find what you need.
That simple idea guided the development of our new City website.
This wasn't just a redesign. We took the opportunity to rethink how Lawrence's digital front door could better reflect what we've heard from our community:
We need to work to make City services easier to access, information easier to understand and the work of local government easier to see.
Before we started moving pages, we needed to understand how people actually use our website, and where the experience wasn't working.
Community feedback via email, in our website survey, and in community public meetings have consistently told us that access to clear, timely and understandable information matters.
As we prepared for the new website, we looked at how people navigated our existing site, what they searched for and which services and information they used most. We used:
Survey data from a community engagement initiative in early 2026
24/7 insight from our previous website
Feedback from community members engaged in online searches and service requests
Focus group insights gathered for more than 12 months
Staff insights from members of Team Lawrence
We also listened.
Through community conversations, feedback about City communications and services, and the experiences shared with staff across the organization, we heard an important distinction: people don't necessarily think about City government according to our organizational chart.
You may not know which department manages a particular service, and you shouldn't have to.
You know what you're trying to accomplish.
That became one of the most important principles behind the new website. We wanted those regular services to be front and center.
As we worked through thousands of pages of City content, we developed a framework for making decisions about what belongs on the website and how people should be able to find it.
The redesigned Lawrenceks.gov website reflects significant work from our community and staff and thoughtful decision-making, including:
A strong focus on user experience, accessibility, and the findability of information, based on community survey feedback
Increased staff training to support both the new platform’s expanded capabilities and ongoing content updates/maintenance
A 53.3% reduction in total page count, eliminating outdated, duplicative, or unnecessary content
More intuitive website navigation, improved integration with third-party platforms, and a design that features beautiful images of our City and our people you might not have seen before
A comprehensive overhaul of website governance, with clearer roles for staff, processes, and accountability for content accuracy
Accessibility remediation to address legacy issues and improve compliance and usability
Future-proofing to better meet archival requirements, evolving accessibility standards, and advancing search engine optimization
For many people, a visit to the City website begins with a task.
Pay a utility bill. Report a pothole. Find your trash day. Register for a recreation program. Apply for a permit. Contact someone. Reserve a facility.
We've worked to make commonly used services easier to identify and reach without requiring you to first understand which City department provides them.
Sometimes you aren't here to complete a transaction. You just need good information.
What can I recycle? When does the pool open? What are the rules for parking downtown? Who do I contact about a neighborhood concern?
City government holds a lot of information. More information, however, doesn't automatically create a better website. Our work has focused on organizing, simplifying and maintaining information so you can get to a useful answer more quickly.
Our website should make that work more visible, and should make it easier to engage when the project is being developed. We’ve already launched Engage Lawrence with our website partner, and we did that based on your requests for earlier engagement.
The new site creates clearer pathways to major City initiatives, strategic work, projects and opportunities to participate. We want you to be able to understand not only what the City is doing, but why it matters, where the work stands and how you can be involved.
A City website needs to work for everyone. We saw this summer that access
Accessibility has been an important part of both the technical development of the site and the way we create content. That includes clearer page structures, more meaningful links, accessible documents and images, readable content and continued attention to evolving digital accessibility standards.
This work isn't finished when a website launches. Accessibility is an ongoing responsibility, and our new website gives us a stronger foundation for continuing that work.
Our Accessibility Plan is here.
Tools for accessible exploration are here.
Behind the scenes, one of the biggest changes was reconsidering how information is organized.
Our previous website grew over many years. Like many government websites, that meant information could become organized around the structure of the organization rather than the needs of the person looking for it.
The new website gives us an opportunity to change that.
City departments still matter, and you'll still be able to find them. But whenever possible, we've built pathways around the questions people bring to us and the services they're trying to reach.
That also meant making choices about what not to bring forward.
City staff reviewed existing content page by page, identifying information that was outdated, duplicative or no longer useful. Content owners across Team Lawrence worked together to migrate, rewrite and reorganize information while learning a new website platform and reconsidering how we communicate online.
The goal wasn't to move the old website into a new design.
The goal was to build a better website.
A website is never really finished
Launch day is a milestone, not a finish line.
A website this large will continue to evolve. You may find something that doesn't work as expected. An old bookmark or search result may lead somewhere that has moved. A page may need more explanation. And as the needs of our community change, the website should change with them.
That's why we've also strengthened the way we manage the website behind the scenes. City staff have clearer responsibilities for maintaining content, additional training and shared standards designed to keep information useful, current and accessible.
We'll also continue paying attention to what people search for, where they have difficulty and what they tell us.
Because the best measure of this website isn't whether it looks better.
It's whether you can find what you need, get something done and better understand the work happening in your community.
We're proud of this next step, but we know we'll keep learning.
If you find something that isn't working, can't locate information you expected to find or have an idea that could make the website more useful, please tell us. You can find that form in our footer – there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We’ll look at it every morning to see what we can do to fix what you’ve reported.
Click here to view form.
Your experience will help us continue improving Lawrence's digital front door — and make it easier for everyone to connect with their City.