Success Story

Hamilton City Council's New Digital Front Counter

By transforming its outdated, difficult-to-navigate website, Hamilton City Council has created a world-class digital platform that better serves its community. Powered by Silverstripe CMS, a formidable Elasticsearch engine, and hosted on Dynamo6's secure and scalable enterprise hosting platform, the new website features improved navigation, a user-friendly design, and a powerful, modern search experience.

Services

  • Managed Services
  • Digital Consultancy
  • Application Development

Deliverables

  • Enterprise Web Development
  • Digital Advisory
  • Custom Systems & Integration
  • Business Analysis
  • Application Hosting & Management
  • Project Management

Hamilton City Council's website was on its last legs. The legacy SharePoint 2013 platform was slow, unsupported, and cluttered with over 5,000 pages of unstructured, outdated content written in internal jargon. The site's navigation was confusing, and the search was so ineffective that front-counter staff had to use their own bookmarks to help residents find information. It was time for a complete overhaul to create a new "digital front counter" that could truly serve the community.

Our approach

  • 01

    Discovery & User Research

    We began with a deep discovery phase, conducting interactive workshops with 12 of the Council's 37 diverse business units to map user journeys and identify pain points. This was validated with extensive user research, including online surveys and in-depth usability testing, to ensure the new platform was built around user needs, not internal structures.

  • 02

    Designing a Uniquely Hamilton Experience

    Working closely with brand design partners Head & Tail, we developed a comprehensive digital design system to extend the Council's brand into the digital realm. Critically, this involved selecting an authentically Kiwi font to support the inclusion of te reo Māori content. The design was further enriched with uniquely Kirikiriroa-inspired supporting graphics—from the Waikato River motif to the Fairfield Bridge, local paddocks, and fog—creating a digital presence that is recognisably Hamilton. This process also drove a massive content overhaul, reducing the site from over 5,000 pages to a focused, user-centric structure of around 500.

  • 03

    Agile Development & Custom Integrations

    An agile scrum team, comprising a cross-functional group from both Hamilton City Council and Dynamo6, managed the development in two-week sprints. A key technical achievement was the custom integration with multiple Council APIs. This included building a powerful and user-friendly cemetery search that connects directly to the Council's internal databases, making previously hard-to-find information instantly accessible. The agile structure also allowed us to pivot mid-project to meet a new requirement: seamlessly integrating HubSpot to allow the communications team to continue managing news content in their preferred platform while presenting a unified experience on the main website.

  • 04

    Building a World-Class Search

    To address the core challenge of findability, we implemented a powerhouse Elasticsearch engine. This went far beyond standard search, providing fuzzy logic and relevance tuning. Critically, it indexes the content of thousands of documents, including PDFs, making information like meeting minutes and public consultation documents instantly discoverable for residents.

  • 05

    Enterprise Hosting and Security

    The new platform is hosted on Dynamo6's Enterprise Hosting, powered by Google Cloud. The environment is hardened to CIS benchmark standards. For network security, Google Cloud Armor provides not only DDoS protection but also a Web Application Firewall configured to help mitigate the OWASP top ten web application security risks, ensuring a fast, secure, and reliable experience.

  • Dynamo6 was awarded the tender because they saw the strength in partnership to land a vision for our digital presence and because their methodology, plus process, focused on the most important person, the user.

    Liam Blackwell

    Senior Digital Communications Specialist

The results

The result of this partnership is a custom developed website that serves as Hamilton City Council’s new digital front counter, presenting a modern, approachable, and highly functional platform for the community.

  • Vastly Improved Findability: The powerful Elasticsearch engine and research-backed information architecture allow users to find what they need quickly and intuitively.

  • A Modern Digital Identity: The new digital design system has created a vibrant, accessible, and recognisably local look and feel that has transformed the Council's digital presence.

  • Structured and Accessible Content: The site has been completely refreshed with scannable, user-focused language and a logical structure, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.

  • A Secure and Scalable Platform: Hosted on Google Cloud and built with custom API integrations, the website is a future-proof asset that supports the Council's ambitious 5-year vision and its plan to consolidate its wider web infrastructure.

  • Measurable Performance Impacts: The new site has delivered tangible improvements, including a reduction in 404 errors, an increase in positive website feedback, and significant performance enhancements in page load times and search result speed.

  • This new website is a massive turning point for Hamilton City Council and how we build our services. It ultimately helps our communities by making things easier, whether they’re registering a dog, paying a parking ticket—sorry!—or finding a playground to take your kids.

    Throughout the whole thing the Dynamo6 team were just great. The extra things we needed along the way were included. The problem-solving and technology solutions have come together seamlessly.

    The Council is now in a really, really good position from the groundwork laid through this project. This massive improvement helps the council move towards its plan of consolidating its website infrastructure, consolidating hosting, and consolidating digital support across the numerous active sites the Hamilton City Council operates.

    Liam Blackwell

    Senior Digital Communications Specialist

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