The Best and Worst U.S State Websites

good bad states

Over the last few years it’s become more and more common to see government websites embrace modern design and open source. It’s now rare to find a new U.S. federal website that isn’t built on open source.

You can see the WhiteHouse.gov team building on Drupal and contributing code to the community. You can see the whole of Healthcare.gov built on Jekyll and actually hosted on Github for anyone to fork.

I wondered whether that same was true of government at the state level. So, I took a look at all the websites for all 50 U.S. states …

The Best

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It may be a surprising winner, but Arkansas.gov was clearly the most impressive state website.

In fact, Arkansas seem to have been a positive example for several years. Back in 2011 they won the best government website award from the Center for Digital Government.

In May this year they redesigned the website again, using Expression Engine and a heavy dose of Bootstrap. Here’s their official overview of the redesign.

What’s equally impressive is that they completed the task for less than $200,000 and didn’t even spend any tax dollars.

The Large Search Box

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While researching all the state websites, one trend stood out … if a state website has been built recently, it features a huge search box.

My guess is that so many citizens are researching so many different topics that a search box is the most efficient navigation. A lot of the bad state websites try to solve this problem with enormous dropdown menus or very over-crowded pages.

Here are two of the better examples from Hawaii and Indiana.

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Open Source

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I was disappointed by how few states relied on open source software. ASP and Java technology dominated most sites.

At the state level, I noted that Arkansas are using open source. Other honorable mentions go to Georgia, who are using Drupal, and Kansas, who are using WordPress.

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Good try, but …

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There were several websites that tried to be cutting-edge, but just ended up being awkward.

Mississippi have just relaunched their website but ended up with a bad version of the Windows 8 design.

South Carolina has some nice features on their site, but also a confusing series of dots and hover boxes that’s similar to Bing.com.

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The Bland

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The majority of websites are instantly forgettable. West Virginia and North Dakota are prime examples. Most state sites look as if they were designed in around 2003.

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The Abysmal

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At the bottom of the ladder, there are several websites that are an active embarrassment to their state governments.

Wisconsin and Florida look as if they were designed in 1993 rather than 2003.

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The Florida site probably gets my vote as the worst state site in the nation, if only because that monstrosity is advertised on every single license plate in the state!

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Final thoughts and more reading

This overview focused on design only. It would be interesting to see a usability on these websites, getting real citizens to try and research information from them.

I wrote this blog before checking the opinions of others, but if you’re interested there are organizations that give formal grades for state websites. The Center for Digital Government does annual rankings. Utah has won a lot of awards and links to many of them on their website.

Author

  • Steve Burge

    Steve is the founder of OSTraining. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Sarasota in the USA. Steve's work straddles the line between teaching and web development.

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Justin Herrin
Justin Herrin
10 years ago

I think you can file New Hampshire’s under the mid-90’s design Abysmal category as well… makes me sad to be a NH-native… [url=http://www.nh.gov/]http://www.nh.gov/[/url]

giovannitampa
giovannitampa
10 years ago

I was hoping that you were going to give a breakdown of which states used, Drupal, joomla, WP or something else. What’s the more popular at the state level?

I remember reading a few years back that most governments in the world were built on joomla, just barely the leader back then. What did you uncover in the USA?

-GiovanniTampa

Ken Lonseth
Ken Lonseth
10 years ago

Agree to an extent. But just because the site has a large image that takes up the whole browser window does not mean its well designed.

Interested to see the usability like you said. Some of the ones that look nice may be horrible to navigate around.

thirdsun
10 years ago

The state of Utah has done a really nice job on their site. I find it very well designed and useful. [url=http://www.utah.gov]www.utah.gov[/url]

Dale DeHart
Dale DeHart
10 years ago

The lack of OS in state gov sites comes as no surprise when you look at the byzantine bidding processes and the decision parameters that drive solution selections.

Organizations tend to come to OS solutions when speed, innovation, and cost effectiveness are driving the decision-making: rarely the case in State (or other) gov entities.

NGO non-profits are another thing altogether, though, where funds are scarce and passion plentiful!

Tip of the hat to AR and HI!

And now the dreaded captcha … third time a charm?

Owen
Owen
10 years ago

I’m new to website design, but come from a graphic arts and sign design background.

Now you’ve got me worried, because I didn’t see much wrong with the ones you classified as abysmal.

Maybe it will become more evident if I go to each and try to use them.

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Iqbal Kharal
10 years ago

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Julian
Julian
9 years ago

I’d much rather have large menus than the home view dominated by a huge photo and panels with empty space. State websites are supposed to be functional not merely “pretty”.

To underline the point, I would much rather explore Florida’s site as it presents much more info in one view – without the need for scrolling or clicking links.

Wisconson may look less sophisticated but at least it looks functional.

By contrast, Arkansas and Indiana have so little info, just a huge photo, that I don’t know if I can be bothered.
Hawaii? Monotone, flat panels and monotone, ambiguous icons. Whatever happened to icons with depth and color and “buttons” with visual clues (e.g. shading) to show they are active and not just a passive title?

Lastly, why is the text on this site grey and not black? Contrast makes reading easier.

$55606106
$55606106
7 years ago

nice post thx very much for us state werbsites 

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