New website seen as plus for Mozingo

By Editor | May 13, 2015 |

Late last year, the Maryville City Council approved a $24,000 contract with Hue Labs of Reno, Nevada, for the redesign of the Mozingo Lake Recreation park website.

The previous website wasn’t that old, having been created less than two years ago following a park rebranding campaign designed in part by marketing students at Northwest Missouri State University.

However, according to Assistant City Manager Ryan Heiland, the earlier site proved cumbersome with regard to online reservations submitted by patrons for rental cabins, recreational vehicle camping sites, shelter houses, boat slips and tee times at the Sechrest 18 golf course.

Heiland said the former reservation system worked by generating emails from patrons that each required about a half-hour of staff time to process.

The new Hue-designed system, which went live May 6, has cut that time to just a few minutes while offering patrons an interactive calendar showing open dates in green and already-reserved dates in red.

In addition, Heiland said, the new site incorporates optimized search engine technology more apt to steer users of laptops, phones, tablets and other devices toward various Mozingo web pages.

That means potential customers doing general searches for “golf,” “fishing,” “camping,” “cabins” and so forth now frequently encounter the park’s name floating to the top of the results list.

Heiland added that the site offers more social media connectivity to services like Google+, expanded mass email capabilities and improved analytics that will allow park staff to better gauge who is using the site for what reasons.

During the council’s regular session this week, Heiland said early feedback relating to the site has been overwhelmingly positive, and that the automated reservation system generated more than $7,000 in sales in its first week of operation.

He said the majority of that business came from RV reservations, but that midweek rental cabins dates were also filling up rapidly, apparently due to the user-friendly calendar.

In its first week of operation, Heiland said, the new site netted 14,434 page views from users in the United States, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, Palestine, Angola, China, Columbia, Germany and France.

In addition to Maryville, American users accessed the site from 355 cities, the most common being St. Joseph; Chicago; Kansas City; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis; Louisville, Kentucky; and Overland Park, Kansas.

Heiland said the most popular avenue for accessing the new site during its first week was through Google followed by direct access through a browser, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Maryville.org and Pandora Internet Radio, a music streaming service where the city has placed a small advertisement.

Once arrived at the Mozingo site, Heiland said, users most often navigate to pages containing information about rental cabins, RV camping, fishing and golf.

In other city business this week, the council:

• Voted to reduce the scope of planned paving projects at Mozingo Lake this summer, limiting asphalt overlays to the park’s two main thoroughfares, Ridge Road and O’Riley Road. That means vehicle paths serving the reserve RV camping area and a parking lot near cabins 6 and 7 will remain graveled, at least for this year.

Structural deterioration beneath existing pavement on O’Riley and Ridge is worse than originally thought, according to city staff, and the cost of repairs will require expenditure of all budgeted funds.

• Approved a pair of contracts with Wyatt Orr Streetscapes for construction this summer of 2,500 linear feet of paved walking trails at Mozingo Lake. Two new trail segments will be located along the north edge of the primitive camping area and the eastern and northern sides of “The Point,” a popular picnicking and event space at the south end of the lake.

Seventy percent of the construction cost is being covered by a grant awarded by the state Department of Natural Resources.

• Approved refinancing of a TIF (tax increment financing) scheme used to pay for construction of the Maryville Hy-Vee retail complex. The move means outstanding construction costs will be repaid in eight years instead of 11, after which the Hy-Vee property will be assessed at its full post-development rate. City Manager Greg McDanel pointed out that 75 percent of the new property tax revenue will benefit the Maryville R-II School District.

• Approved event requests by the Greater Maryville Chamber of Commerce to hold the Maryville Marathon & Chamber Country Classic and County Showdown talent contest on Saturday, June 13.

The marathon is set to begin at 6:30 a.m. and end about 1:30 p.m. The Country Showdown is scheduled from 4-7 that afternoon on the east side of the downtown square.

• Approved an event request for the Nodaway County Fair. During fair week, the downtown square will be closed to traffic from 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 14, until about 2 p.m. Sunday, July 19.

• Approved an event request for the annual Special Olympics Torch Run, set to begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 26, on the west lawn of the Nodaway County Courthouse. Runners will proceed south down Main Street to the Kawasaki factory under escort provided by Maryville Public Safety.

Special Olympics volunteers also received approval for a Unified Torch Relay Across America event from 1-5 p.m. Sunday, June 28, at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park.

• Approved a liquor license application for the new Casey’s General Store under construction at 1719 E. First Street. The store, set to open in June, will be required to submit a separate application for the new liquor license year beginning July 1.

• Appointed the following people to serve either two- or three-year terms on the new Junior Golf Foundation Board: Bruce Twaddle (two years), Sean Sheil (two years), Troy Hayes (three years), Matt Symonds (three years) and Brenda Ricks (three years).