Security and Usability Are Goals for Town’s New Website
- Philip Thibodeau
- Jan 21
- 4 min read
Southington’s new head of IT, Mitchell Gugliotti, joined Town Hall last January after a stint at the State DOT, where he was responsible for various digital data projects. Now as the Director of Informational Technology and Geographic Information Systems, he heads an office that is responsible for building and maintaining the Town’s main website.
As soon as he arrived, he began to hear complaints about the site – lots of complaints, from Town staff, elected officials, and other users.
So Gugliotti set out to do something about that. Taking advantage of the fact that the Town had to switch to a new domain to stay compliant with State regulations, he worked with his staff to do a complete overhaul of its layout and design.
Now, one year later, the Town has a new website – https://www.southingtonct.gov/ - which he hopes will offer an improved user experience, among other things.
Protecting against Scams
There were two main reasons for the upgrade, according to Gugliotti. First, the State of Connecticut mandated that the web addresses for all government agencies, including towns, must belong to the .gov domain by July 1, 2026. That means they must have .gov at the end of their urls.
This change is not cosmetic, but designed to enhance security by protecting users from scams and fraud. Acquiring a .gov domain is difficult; an individual must jump through a series of hoops to be approved for one, such as proving they represent a government entity and submitting a passport scan. By contrast, acquiring a .org domain is fairly easy. Scammers sometimes create mimic websites and lure people to them with addresses that look official – townofsouthingtonofficial.org, for example. The .gov tag thus serves as a token of authenticity.
“If people think they are interacting with a government website, they can now keep it in the back of their heads – if it’s not .gov, don’t trust it,” Gugliotti said.
Improving the User Experience
Beyond enhanced security, the new website’s design is intended to address the host of user complaints.
“When I came here, all the reports I got were that it’s hard to navigate the site. People said, I can’t find anything I’m looking for; things are buried; I’m trying to pay a bill and it takes a million clicks to get there. Residents, Town Council members, the Town Manager, they all reported the same thing.”
“For me, that was a red flag that something needed to be changed. Especially because, in this day and age, people want to interact with the Town online, since it’s convenient. It also makes the Town’s job easier when things are online because there are other automations we can put in on the back end that make things run more efficiently.”
“We were making the switch from .org to .gov, and we were working on moving our email to a cloud service. So this seemed like a good time to combine jobs.”
The task turned out to be larger than he had expected. “I actually underestimated the website at first,” Gugliotti admitted. “I didn’t realize it was so complex, I thought it would be a lot more focused. As I went through the process, I started to really see the spiderweb that was underneath the hood, that had accumulated over the years.”
Ideas for the new layout and organization came from many different sources. “My core testers are people from all different walks of life – people here in town, different department heads. I also had a group of people who are currently in charge of maintaining the website, and they had great ideas as well.”
He even consulted with his family: “Full disclosure: I use my parents a lot as test subjects. They love it and they hate it sometimes. The more the better. I’m always open to more feedback.”
Gugliotti and his staff did most of the work themselves. “All of the domain work we did in-house. The email migration we did in-house. The redesign was a hybrid approach where we had control of the design but farmed it out.” A web developer was paid a few thousand dollars to assist with the graphic design. “We worked on it for about six months.”
As for the success of the final product, readers can judge for themselves by trying out the site, which is now live. One frequently-used function, ‘Pay Bills Online’ now sits front and center on the homepage; a user can reach most payment pages in about two clicks.
“The number one thing I wanted to focus on was getting where you want to go with the least amount of clicks as possible,” Gugliotti said.
The site also has a cleaner design than the old one, with boldface headers, bullet-pointed text, and a color-scheme based on SHS Blue Knights’ blue.
Now that the new site is up and running, the IT office will monitor how well it functions, gather feedback, and determine which parts, if any, require tweaking. After that, Mitchell plans to revamp the procedures departments must use to submit requests for updates. He would also like to begin a conversation with departments like the Library and Calendar House, which maintain their own sites, to help them with upgrades and make all the town’s sites work together smoothly.
“We haven’t gotten there yet," he noted. "Those are the next steps."