Building a Modern Digital Experience with Xperience by Kentico SaaS
The Town of Halton Hills partnered with Inorbital to redesign and rebuild its primary municipal website, creating a modern digital experience that makes it easier for residents, businesses and visitors to find information, access services and stay connected with their community. Built on Xperience by Kentico SaaS, the new haltonhills.ca provides a clearer, more accessible and mobile-friendly foundation for the Town’s growing digital services.
The website is the first major launch within a broader digital modernization initiative. Dedicated Invest Halton Hills and Visit Halton Hills websites are planned to follow later in 2026, creating a connected family of digital experiences serving municipal, economic development and tourism audiences. The original project scope established the Town’s broader vision for a modernized digital platform and supporting web properties.
Client Overview
The Town of Halton Hills is a growing municipality west of Toronto encompassing Georgetown, Acton and surrounding rural communities. Its website plays an important role in connecting residents with municipal services, programs, facilities, public information, Council activity and opportunities to participate in the community. The new haltonhills.ca reflects that service-oriented role. The homepage puts commonly used tasks front and centre, including facilities, parks and trails, Council meeting live streams, property taxes and reporting an issue.
The Challenge
Municipal websites serve a particularly broad audience. A single visitor may be looking for recreation programs, property information, a building service, road updates, Council information, transit services or an opportunity to provide feedback. The challenge was therefore larger than simply giving the Town a more modern visual design. The new website needed to make a large amount of municipal information easier to navigate while supporting residents with very different needs, levels of digital familiarity and devices. It also needed to provide a stronger foundation for the Town’s future digital ecosystem, including separate economic development and tourism experiences scheduled to follow.
Project Goals & Objectives
The project centred on several key objectives:
- Create a more intuitive, resident-focused municipal website.
- Improve navigation and make frequently used services easier to find.
- Deliver a fully responsive experience across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
- Incorporate accessibility into the design and development process.
- Give Town staff flexible tools to maintain and publish content.
- Improve the organization of news, services, programs and community information.
- Establish a modern SaaS platform that can evolve with the Town.
- Create a digital foundation capable of supporting future Invest Halton Hills and Visit Halton Hills websites.
Scope of Services
A Service-Focused User Experience
One of the strongest changes visible on the live site is the shift toward helping users complete tasks quickly. The homepage prominently surfaces common needs rather than forcing users to understand the Town’s internal departmental structure. Residents can quickly reach areas such as:
- Facilities, Parks & Trails
- Property Taxes
- Recreation Programs
- Your Property
- Municipal Election information
- Environmental initiatives
- Council meeting live streams
- Report an Issue
The site's own message, “Find what you need, when you need it,” reflects the intent behind the new experience. That service-first approach continues throughout the website. The Town Services area organizes information around recognizable user needs such as civic services, property development, recreation, transportation and emergency services.
Clearer Information Architecture
Municipal websites can easily become organized around departments instead of users. The new Halton Hills website takes a more task-oriented approach, grouping related content in ways that make sense to residents. For example, the Town Services section connects users directly to areas such as building on a property, developing Town property, transit and transportation, facilities and trails, and emergency services. This helps reduce the amount of organizational knowledge a visitor needs before they can find the right information.
News & Community Information
Keeping residents informed is a major responsibility of a municipal website. The new site provides a dedicated news experience with searchable and filterable content, including media releases, public notices, Mayor’s messages and ward-specific information. Current notices and news are also surfaced directly on the homepage, helping important community information remain visible without requiring visitors to actively seek it out. The Town has also created a centralized subscription experience where residents can sign up for newsletters, alerts, Mayor’s messages and other updates.
Supporting Civic Engagement
The website is also designed to help residents participate in their community. The Get Involved section brings together opportunities to stay informed, volunteer, learn about local government, explore Town careers and participate in municipal initiatives. This gives civic participation a more prominent role within the overall digital experience rather than treating it as an isolated section of the website.
Accessibility by Design
Accessibility is particularly important for municipal websites because public information and services must be usable by the widest possible audience. The Town publicly states that it continues to incorporate accessibility into its website based on AODA and World Wide Web Consortium guidance. Accessibility was therefore treated as part of the overall user experience rather than a separate post-launch exercise. The new platform provides a stronger foundation for accessible navigation, responsive layouts, structured content and ongoing improvements as standards and user expectations continue to evolve.
Built on Xperience by Kentico SaaS
The new haltonhills.ca is powered by Xperience by Kentico SaaS. Moving to a modern SaaS digital experience platform gives the Town a stronger long-term foundation for managing and expanding its digital services. For content teams, the platform provides a more flexible environment for publishing municipal information while supporting reusable patterns and consistent page experiences. For the Town, the SaaS approach also reduces dependence on traditional large-scale CMS version upgrades and provides a platform that can evolve through ongoing releases.
Supporting Business & Economic Development
The current municipal site also provides a strong bridge to the Town’s economic development content. The business section helps users explore investment opportunities, business supports, licensing requirements, procurement and economic development resources. This content will eventually be complemented by the dedicated Invest Halton Hills website planned for later in 2026. That future site will allow the Town to provide a more specialized experience for businesses, investors and economic development audiences while remaining part of the broader Halton Hills digital ecosystem.
Preparing for Visit Halton Hills
Tourism content currently connects visitors with attractions, events, trails, arts and culture, shopping, dining and outdoor experiences. The live municipal site already points users toward the Town’s tourism resources and promotes the role that events and local experiences play within the community.
A dedicated Visit Halton Hills website is scheduled to launch later in 2026, providing a more focused tourism experience built around the needs of visitors and local tourism businesses.
The important point for the case study is that haltonhills.ca is the first phase of a larger digital ecosystem, not the final endpoint.
Results
The new haltonhills.ca gives the Town of Halton Hills a more modern and service-oriented digital front door. Residents can more easily discover municipal services, recreation programs, property information, news, alerts and opportunities to participate in their community. The site also provides Town staff with a more sustainable digital foundation for managing a large and continually changing body of municipal content. From a technology perspective, Xperience by Kentico SaaS establishes a platform that can continue evolving without requiring the Town to repeatedly undertake major CMS replacement projects. Most importantly, the new site provides the foundation for a broader Halton Hills digital ecosystem.
The municipal website is now live, while dedicated Invest Halton Hills and Visit Halton Hills websites are scheduled to follow later in 2026, allowing each audience to receive a more focused experience while remaining part of a connected platform.
Project Details
Client: Town of Halton Hills
Website: haltonhills.ca
Launch: 2026
Platform: Xperience by Kentico SaaS
Project Type: Municipal Website Redesign & Digital Platform Modernization
Awards: Kentico Site of the Month August 2026
