Sometime this week, Vicksburg residents visiting the city’s website at vicksburg.org, will open a colorful, more user-friendly site with tabs and buttons providing easier access to city information, chats with Action Line workers, police radio calls and the opportunity to pay utility bills online.

The website upgrade is its first overhaul in eight years, said Vicksburg IT director Billy Gordon. He said the city has had a website for about 16 years.

“The one we’re on right now had a lot of good information,” he said. “That information is still there. It just got a facelift.”

The change is more than cosmetic.

Split into three sections, the home page greets visitors with photos of the city, videos about Vicksburg and the Vicksburg National Military Park, and links to the city’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

A row of tabs over pictures provides links to city departments, a library of city forms and applications and links to other community organizations and county websites.

The second section features eight buttons for access to the city’s most used sites. The offerings are city departments, the city employee directory, Action Line, city maps and utility billing.

“The center section was added at the mayor’s (Paul Winfield) request,” Gordon said. “He had seen something on the City of New Orleans’ website that was similar to this, where they put some of their more popular sites.”

The online billing button in the section is expected to be popular, Gordon said.

He said online bill paying lets utility customers pay their water and gas bills electronically using a credit card, or a debit card with a Visa or Mastercard logo, instead of mailing a payment or paying the bill in person. He said the customer’s credit card company will assess a $1 fee to process the payment.

He said the city purchased the e-billing software from Harris Computer System’s i-nHANCE Division of Tyler, Texas, for a one-time, $3,500 fee for the software and installation, and a $3,200 one-time fee to handle the e-billing. The system was to be installed by Friday.

“They want to test the system for a few days to make sure that payments are matched to the right account,” Gordon said. “We’re hoping that it will be ready to go when we put the new site online. If not, we’ll go online without it and add online bill paying later.”

“We’re really excited to offer this feature to our customers,” said Tammye Christmas, water and gas administration director. “I think it will be utilized by a lot of people.”

One feature on each of the site’s pages, Gordon said, is a small tab on the right side saying, “Contact us.” Clicking on the tab takes the user directly to the Action Line page, where a form to request service pops up.

“Go to a section in the upper right hand corner of the site, click on ‘live support,’ and you can chat directly with someone on the Action Line,” he said.

He said the live chat was the idea of city policy director Marie Thompson, who said she got the idea from another city’s website.

“I thought it was a good idea, because we have some people who may have an issue and can’t call because of their work schedule,” she said. “They can do a chat during their lunch. It always feels better to have a conversation instead of filling out a form.”

The bottom section includes news about city government, including emergency notices and warnings. The section also features a continuously updated weather section, and access to the Vicksburg Police Department.

Visitors to the police department’s page can get safety and crime prevention tips and listen to live police and fire calls. They can report crimes by clicking on “submit a crime tip” on the department’s menu. Crime tips, Gordon said, go directly to the police department.

Gordon said Winfield suggested changing the website after he took office.

“I just felt after I got here that the website was not reflective of what we should be about,” Winfield said. “Our website was not as vibrant as it should be and needed to be updated. This new site is much more user friendly and more up-to-date. I’m excited.”

Gordon said work began on the site in November, with several prototype designs. He said IT staff member Kelly Mitchell did most of the work on the site’s information content.

“I had meetings with a lot of different people, and they had a lot of different ideas,” he said. “I tried to come up with a design that encompassed those ideas.”

Outside of time spent working on the site, he said, the only cost to develop it was $59.95 for template software for the site. Gordon used a free design content manager software. The videos, he said, came from YouTube and the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“This is a nice-looking site,” VCVB executive director Bill Seratt said. “It is exceptional. It has good information and it’s clean and easy to navigate. For visitors, if they don’t hit ‘Visit Vicksburg,’ and they come across this one to find Vicksburg, Mississippi, this will get them to the market. This is so much better.”