The Staffing Cost Nobody's Counting — How a Bad Municipal Website Drives Phone Calls, Walk-ins, and Repeated Emails

There's an expense buried in every municipal budget that nobody's counting: the staff time spent answering questions the website should be answering. Phone calls about meeting schedules. Walk-ins for forms that don't work on a phone. Emails asking for information that's buried three clicks deep. For a typical New Jersey municipality, the annual cost of these avoidable interactions runs into the tens of thousands of dollars — and it recurs every year. Here's how to estimate what your website is really costing you and why a redesign is a staffing decision as much as a technology one.