CMS spent $170K on new website, but glitches persist
Website redesign leaves some parents frustrated and prompts calls to schools; ‘I can’t find anything’
by Michelle Crouch
If you tried to find anything on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ new website recently, chances are you came up empty — or at least a little frustrated.
If you Googled the name of a CMS school, you got directed to a generic www.wearecms.com page that listed every CMS school, forcing you to scroll down and click on the correct school. If you Googled a CMS department, you landed on a generic www.wearecms.com home page rather than on the specific page with the information you sought.
CMS paid Los Angeles-based tech company Edlio $170,000 to redesign all of the district’s public-facing websites — including the home pages for every school, according to a contract reviewed by the Ledger. As part of the redesign, CMS switched its color scheme from red to blue and moved all of its pages to the www.wearecms.com domain.
The contract calls for Edlio to maintain the sites and provide technical support to CMS for the next two years and to receive two more payments of $135,000 over that time. The contract did not require school board approval, though it was signed by school board chair Mary McCray.
CMS spokeswoman Renee McCoy said in an email that a goal of the redesign was to “empower people with accurate and accessible information.” She said last week that CMS is in the process of making its second payment to Edlio.
Many parents have found the redesign challenging. When one frustrated web searcher asked others what they thought of the redesign on Facebook last month, parents quickly weighed in:
- “The site looks as if it was designed by high school technology students.”
- “Perfect example of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”
- “It just seems that it wasn’t user tested, AT ALL.”
- “I can’t find anything.”
Since The Ledger started asking questions about the website last month, either Edlio or CMS has made some fixes. A Google search now brings up the correct links to popular CMS topics such as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, the CMS transportation department and school calendars. But less popular pages are still tough to find:
- A Google search for “Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools media room” — the name of the page where CMS lists media contacts — returns a couple lines of information from that page on Google. But if you click the link, you’re led to the main www.wearecms.com home page with no mention of media. Typing “media room” into the search bar at the top of that page returns no relevant results.
- A search for “Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools weapons policy” on Google provides a link that goes to the main CMS page. The second link listed in Google goes to the list of CMS schools.
Asked about the website’s problems, an Edlio spokeswoman said the company is working with CMS, which she said has control over the site’s content.
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This article originally appeared in the Nov. 6, 2019, edition of the Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter focusing on local news. Sign up for free here:
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Web redesign best practices: Austin Crane, owner of Charlotte website redesign firm Bellaworks — which is not affiliated with the CMS website project — said it’s not considered best practice to do what he called a “blanket URL redirect” to a generic homepage when you do a site redesign.
Instead, he said, designers typically provide a redirect to every page so visitors get redirected to the link they were looking for.
“It’s tedious because you have to copy and paste every URL,” he said, “but it’s standard practice, and we do it as part of every redesign.”
School info tricky to unearth: Another complaint about the new sites is that it’s difficult to find information on individual school pages. On the old www.cms.k12.nc.us sites, each school page on the left-hand side had a list of quick links to pages with information about the parent-teacher organization, prospective family information and the school handbook.
Now, to find those links, you have hover over the words “Our School” at the top of each page. But the words are not underlined or highlighted, so visitors don’t realize you’re supposed to hover there.
More phone calls: One school secretary told the Ledger she’s getting a lot more calls from people asking where to find information that used to be easy to find on the website. “This new website has not made our lives easy,” she said.
McCoy said the district is working with Edlio “to address all issues as they are presented.”
Michelle Crouch is a freelance journalist in Charlotte who covers health, personal finance and parenting. Her work has appeared in a variety of local and national publications, including Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, Prevention and AARP.
