City of San Marcos launches new mobile app

A new app can help San Marcans navigate the city’s website quickly and easily.

Last week, the City of San Marcos launched its new Civic Mobile app, which allows residents to find easy access to sites on the city’s website - all from their phone. The app is provided through the City’s web provider, CivicPlus, and takes users to a menu of selections that link to frequently used parts of the City’s website.

Lauren Volpe, Marketing & Multimedia Specialist for the City of San Marcos, said the biggest highlight of the app, for her, is the ease in which people can find what they’re looking for on the website.

“So rather than having to navigate through the website on their phone, which might be daunting, they just basically have a list of frequently used topics,” Volpe said. “You can look for posted jobs, you can look for adoptable pets, you can look for all the forms that the City provides, we have our social media outlets on there and you can get to the site to pay your bill on there, like your electricity bill.”

Volpe said the City’s two most frequented sites, which allow residents to pay their bills and look at adoptable animals, will be included in the app.

In April, the City’s website went through a redesign, which was a cosmetic remodel of the site. Volpe said CivicPlus reorganized the City’s main menu so that community members have an easier time finding what they’re looking for, and so things would be brighter, more colorful and more reflective of the city as a whole.

“We added new images, new colors, new buttons and branding to try and make it a lot more user-friendly,” Volpe said.

During the beginning talks of the redesign, the City learned from CivicPlus about the possibility of launching an app.

“When we first started talking about the whole of the redesign they had mentioned that this was something that we can launch and incorporate,” Volpe said. “And I think that whole time we wanted that to be a part of it.”

The app is available on both the Apple store as well as the Google Play store for both Android and Apple phones.

“I really hope that people will download it and basically use it as a guide to the website and use it as a onestop shopping place to get where they need to go as far as getting in touch with the City of San Marcos,” she said.

Volpe said if users experience any issues they can submit a comment to communicationsinfo@sanmarcostx.gov.