Effective marketing to staff is critical-from the beginning stages of gathering ideas and needs analysis until the Web site becomes part of the day-to-day business of your government. Market your project with the tools and support you have at your disposal. This may include getting supporters to talk about the project or creating a mock-up of the home page to show what it will look like.

The Web managers we spoke with said it helped to have elected officials-your top-level support-tout the Web project at meetings with staff to gain support and acceptance. This is especially useful at the beginning of the project. One town encouraged local non-profits and citizens to ask for online information. In another case, a city department gained community support by quickly launching a site to illustrate how it could help local groups and individuals.