STA Coronavirus Response Website
Target Audience: The target audiences for this website were Spokane Transit riders, STA employees and the general public.
Strategy Objective:We needed a one-stop source of information for our emergency response. With riders and employees raising legitimate questions about the safety of public transit, we went outside standard protocols to build an entirely new website solely focused on our agency's COVID-19 response. We bought new Internet domains with our credit cards and taught ourselves to use a new quick-and-dirty CMS. We gave the new website a distinctive look and feel, and took new photos and video to make the site more visual than our regular agency site. We had everything up and running within a few days. Because of the emergency situation, we didn't always seek the necessary approvals or sign-offs. We just… did it. The total budget for the website was $216.
Situation Challenge: For Spokane, April 2020 was the tipping point when many in the community began to panic over the coronavirus and there was criticism of Spokane Transit for maintaining full bus service during the pandemic. Many didn't understand or agree that public transit was an essential tool for large parts of the population to get to medical appointments, buy groceries and get to essential jobs. People who depended on public transit wanted to know if it was safe to ride the bus and, internally, employees were questioning whether or not it was safe to come to work. We needed to provide, and quickly, transparent information to all audiences about STA's response to this emergent issue.
Results Impact: Our agency saw the site as the best way to be completely transparent with the public and employees. The impact of the website was felt very quickly. Managers reported employees had fewer questions and less worry about what the agency was doing once the site was up. Drivers still answered questions from riders, but were also able to point them to the new website. On social media, we contacted critical voices and directed them to the site, and a lot of the anxiousness waned. Pressure was taken off leadership to answer the same questions over and over because our strategies were being laid out for the public immediately after being adopted. The site has over 41k page views and over 24k unique visitors. It has over 18x more unique visitors than STA's only other microsite.
Why Submit: We are submitting this project because it symbolizes what our small, scrappy team does best — work together, meet deadlines under pressure, spend hardly any money, and exceed expectations to make public transit easier and more convenient to use. The information on the site demonstrated STA's commitment to safety and transparency as the agency dealt with the evolving pandemic. The work was done at the start of the pandemic, when information was chaotic and fears were high, but we helped our riders and employees understand what STA was doing in response to the evolving pandemic.