Town of Erin’s new website could be live as soon as August

ERIN – The Town of Erin’s new website, projected to go live in late August, will feature a multitude of new and improved features, officials say. 

“The Town of Erin is redesigning Erin.ca to create a more accessible sort of modern hub for municipal information,” said senior communications officer Chris Vernon during a March 26 council meeting.

The current website is run by RKD, a professional web design company based in Guelph, and the new website will be run by the same company.

“We’re staying with the current provider,” said Vernon. “We’ve discovered several problems with the website for RKD to work on as we go through this.”

Vernon told council the new website is currently in the design phase and he outlined various key milestones for the new website, some of which have been met, and others that are still being worked on.

“The first thing we’ve done is identified our audiences,” said Vernon.

According to Vernon, staff have identified three core audience segments: country families, kick-back country (retired country couples), and diverse high-income families.

Communications staff met with various department heads and council members in a series of sessions in late 2025. The sessions outlined how the current website is used, the various pain points in its use, and potential improvements for the new website. 

Following the sessions, a survey was presented to the community through Erin Engaged. The survey received 36 responses, with community members emphasizing the need for easier ways to fill out forms and to access news and road closures, and for clearer site navigation and design.

Of the 36 responses, just over 40 per cent rated the website’s navigation and layout as confusing, under 20% rated it as intuitive and just over 40% selected neutral.

Staff are currently collecting and refining the requirements for the new website.

“We’ve compiled it into a master spreadsheet, which has been very labour-intensive for us, but it’s very all-encompassing of every link and URL that is in this current site,” said Vernon. 

“We’ve taken the pain points, we know what they are, we’ve analyzed them as best we can, and we handed that over to the RKD designers, and they try to alleviate those pain points.” 

As of now, public and in-house workshops for the new website are set to begin early April, and the beta version of the new website is expected to be complete in late July, with a hopeful official launch date of late August.

Councillor Bridget Ryan questioned how the website would address the identified audiences effectively.

“How are we going to be able to address all those three different primary target audiences without it being cluttered?” asked Ryan during the meeting.

Vernon replied, “You don’t put all the content up there just because it fits into that bucket; it doesn’t mean any more, or any new content. What it means is that you look at the content you have through a lens that targets one of these three groups.”

Touching on the proposed new features for the website, councillor Cathy Aylard asked, what new service options would be available. 

“There’s many that we are looking at right now,” said Vernon. “There will be a sort of expanded pay system, e-commerce will be built in there as well.” 

Vernon told council staff hopes to include a community news feed on the main page of the new website, and the e-commerce section will offer more payment options and provide an online space for residents to obtain burn permits and tax forms, which can currently only be obtained at the town office.

Mayor Michael Dehn asked about an amber alert sort of system for town emergencies.

Vernon assured council the town does currently have an email-based alert system for those who have signed up, and while SMS messaging systems are faster and more effective, the town is not currently undertaking an SMS alert system at this time.

Dehn did however, remind the public that in the event of an emergency road closure or other road-related emergencies, information can be found on Municipal 511, a map-based web service that provides real-time information on road construction, closures, maintenance and reduced load restrictions managed by local municipalities.

“I think our roads department has been really good at using municipal 511 to put information up there,” said Dehn, “But not enough residents know that it exists there.”

Vernon told council the new website will require some training, as it will include new features, however the goal is to build an intuitive site where residents can find what they are looking for in “just three clicks.”

Ryan asked how the town would go about directing residents away from the “noise” on Facebook and to the new website for “accurate information.”

“What are a couple of things that you and your team are doing to make sure that people come to the Town of Erin site as opposed to go to their friend’s page or go to somebody’s Facebook page and create the noise?” asked Ryan.

“If you’re ever going to try and get those people off of that Facebook page and to stop being vocal, they won’t,” said Vernon. 

“It’s an addiction, and it’s the space that they like to play in.

“You could do everything in the world to alleviate that, or think that you’re alleviating that, but that’s still the world where those individuals like to play.” 

More updates on the new website will be shared with council and the public throughout the process.