Launching the Fishers Parks websites was the final phase of the City of Fishers web consolidation project. 

Since 2023, our team has worked closely with the City of Fishers to consolidate their municipal websites into one comprehensive multisite. We began by launching the redesigned City of Fishers website—and then built out dedicated sites for important departments, such as Fire, Police, Health, and Economic Development. 

With that done, we met with the Fishers Parks team to discuss their needs and create a strategy for their new website. This discovery work included:

• Deciding to change their web domain from PlayFishers.com to FishersParks.com

• Completing a full audit of the Fishers Parks websites

• Adding a microsite for the Fishers AgriPark, as well as keeping the existing microsites for Fishers Maker Playground and the Nickel Plate District AMP

• Developing sitemaps for all four websites

• Finalizing our recommendations for custom functionality, beyond the existing City of Fishers website solutions.

Once we laid the foundation, we began moving into design and development. While we were working on the WordPress websites, the City of Fishers Business Solutions Group was also implementing a new, city-wide registration system. This added an additional layer of complexity and collaboration to this project that’s not standard for all web development projects.

We brought the Fishers Parks brand to life with a new website design.

INNOVATIVE worked with Fishers Parks in 2020 on a full rebrand—complete with vibrant colors, a fresh new logo, and a playful brand voice. We were excited to come back four years later and help them build a website that captures that energy with larger brand imagery and dynamic video elements.

In addition to showcasing their best-in-class brand, the new website also gives the Fishers Parks team more control over the pages, allowing them to turn off seasonal content while still keeping the page live year-round. This new functionality will be a huge help with long-term SEO gains, which is especially important when moving to a brand-new domain.

This multisite project let us improve URL structures and clean up the site architecture across the Fishers Parks web properties.

When we conducted our initial site audit, it was clear that their old CMS platform had its limitations. Over the years, they ended up with numerous duplicate pages and struggled to keep URLs clean and readable across all their sites.

Throughout our redevelopment project, we focused a lot of attention on reducing duplicate content, keeping parent-child relationships consistent, and giving clients the manual ability to add and edit the navigation and sidebar elements. This disciplined approach ensured that the Fishers Parks team could focus on keeping page architecture clean and organized from start to finish.

We focused on accessibility throughout the development process.

All the City of Fishers websites are optimized with the AccessiBe widget to ensure ADA compliance and best practices, but our accessibility discussion didn’t end there. Throughout the website design process, we worked diligently to optimize color pairings and page layouts to create a better user experience for a larger range of visitors.

Some of our other accessibility improvements included:

• Adjusting color contrast to fit within recommended standards

• Minimizing the use of graphic text dividers

• Optimizing file size and naming structures

• Ensuring alt-text copy for any and all images—with special attention paid to any graphics that remained on the site.

Our team is excited to continue helping the City of Fishers and Fishers Parks as these four sites move into maintenance, where we will be able to analyze visitor behaviors and work with their team to adjust page design and site usability as needed.