Project Overview

The Contra Costa Transportation Authority recently executed a complete overhaul of their website, with the help of San Ramon-based Creative Digital Agency.

The modern and engaging new design focuses on highlighting what is most relevant to each individual who visits the site, with an interactive map keeping visitors up-to date with all the innovative work being done to improve their quality of life at home (and on their commute).

Project Commissioner

Contra Costa Transportation Authority

Project Creator

Creative Digital Agency

Project Brief

The new website was designed to address what is the most relevant to each of the different types of prospective visitors (the public, the press, contractors, and partner organizations). The new homepage emphasizes clear and immediate calls to action, allowing the media to see recent news, updates, contractors to view current opportunities, and the public to engage with a custom-built, interactive map showing the latest news and projects happening near their homes or along their commutes.

A much more prominent and streamlined search functionality further enables visitors to quickly find exactly what they are looking for.

Perhaps the more important consideration for the site was updating it for the enormous number of visitors whose primary method of online browsing happens on their mobile devices. Every element of the website was made mobile-responsive to make the information much more accessible to younger audiences, in particular.

To best serve the diverse population of Contra Costa County, language and accessibility features were improved as well. New functionality was added to aid legibility of the text or the identification of images for the vision-impaired.

Lastly, a new backend platform and content management system was adopted to make it much faster and easier for CCTA’s team to make website updates, further streamlining their ability to communicate with the public and press.

Project Innovation/Need

In government, the most important consideration is putting the needs of the public at the forefront. While the Contra Costa Transportation Authority performs numerous services to improve the quality of life for Bay Area residents, they saw an opportunity to better connect the work they do with the people they serve, using a complete overhaul of their website to streamline communications.

To this end, CCTA partnered with the San-Ramon based Creative Digital Agency to strategically improve not just the look and feel of the website, but the fundamental way in which the public interacts with it.

Design Challenge

The previous, text-heavy version of the site was updated to feature a more modern, visual-based user experience that uses large format photos and video to make it easy and intuitive to explore the mission of CCTA and the work they do, with greater detail and information being provided to visitors as they show interest and navigate deeper into the website resources.

User Experience

The new website celebrates the diversity that makes this region so distinctive, offering enhanced search capabilities and improved language and accessibility features for the visually-impaired.

The updated design enables faster, simpler, and more effective communication to the public, the press, and partner agencies throughout the region.

In addition to aiding residents and commuters in the area, CCTA’s new website helps inform the local contractors about a wide variety of exciting opportunities providing construction and professional services.