The City of Las Vegas's website has undergone a redesign.
The homepage features a panoramic view of downtown. In the foreground is a showgirl wearing an enormous feathered headdress. Plus the words: “Welcome To The City of Las Vegas."
Las Vegas City Manager Betsy Fretwell told KNPR's State of Nevada that they choose the showgirl image because of what it means to the city.
“One of the things that we wanted to make sure that we took advantage of is our iconic stature in the community and our recognition worldwide," she said, "The showgirl really captured a lot of that and we felt like that was really an eye-catching moment on the front of our website.”
The website cost about $41,000 to design and $420,000 to build, but Fretwell called it a "worthwhile investment."
The city hadn't redesigned its website for a decade and had around 2,800 pages on the site, making navigation and searching difficult.
"One of things we've really focused heavily on is transparency," Fretwell said. "We wanted to make sure we were making date available in a way that people can easily access it."
The website includes information for locals and for visitors: cultural offerings, city financial information, housing information, and much more.
“Our checkbook is on the website," Fretwell said, "So if you’re interested in finding out if we’ve written a check to MTO Café, which is the café that right across the street from city hall, you could go find that out relatively easily by using the checkbook.”
Fretwell says that more than three million people visit the city's website every year with about 10,000 visitors per day.
Betsy Fretwell, city manager, city of Las Vegas
