September 5th, 2007
Personal property web site easier to use - Military Traffic Management Command - Brief Article
Every day, from 300 to 500 users tap into MTMC’s Personal Property Web pages.
This Internet audience from around the world includes service members, installation travel offices, and household goods moving companies.
Since its inception in 1996, the Web site has provided essential information on MTMC’s Personal Property program. MTMC moves an average of 646,000 service members a year.
On Nov. 24, users who went to www.mtmc.army.mil and then clicked on “Transportation Services” found an entirely different Personal Property Web section.
“We had been putting changes on it for years,” said Hank Spieler, Chief, Domestic and International Rates.
“We decided on a total redesign.”
Staying true to a reinvention design, Transportation Assistant Cliff Mechalske started with a blank screen.
Relying on college automation courses, Mechalske used Microsoft Front Page software to totally redesign the Personal Property home page.
“I wanted to make it easier to use and more professional in its look,” said Mechalske, 23, who started working at MTMC as a high school intern in 1993.
As a methodology, Mechalske used two personal computers. On one, he viewed the old Personal Property Web site; on the second, he designed a totally new one.
One of the biggest changes was on the site’s first page. A user on the old site had to scroll down through dozens of listings in a fact-finding effort.
No longer: the new site has just nine listings.
Related topics are then broken down under such categories as Latest Updates, Domestic Advisory, International Advisory, and Carrier Approvals.
“It’s a new look, a new feel,” said Mechalske. “It is now easier to use.” Mechalske sandwiched the Web redesign work with his other duties over a six-month period.
What about the future?
Mechalske has other goals.
“I would like to expand the user capability by creating some Oracle-generated Web pages,” said Mechalske.
The pages would allow users to seek additional information on the Web site.
“We are in an interactive mode,” said Spieler. “All the information users formerly had to research on paper–volumes of paper–is now on the Web.”
The new Web pages have drawn positive reactions.
“It’s very nice and easy to use,” said Mae Ohori, a Traffic Management Specialist with the 599th Transportation Group, Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii.
“I like the way it’s set up and how the icons are presented,” said Ohori, a 13-year MTMC veteran who works in the group’s Personal Property section.
“As an example, if you’re in the International Program, there are boxes and you know where to go.”
Other praise came from Lynn Steinhauser, Director of Customer Relations, The Day companies, Inc., Norfolk, Neb.
“I love the way the Personal Property page has been redesigned,” said Steinhauser.
“Things are a lot easier to find, and the design is very pleasant to view and work with.”
Steinhauser checks the MTMC Web site twice a day for updates. The firm’s invoicing team uses the site’s online rates and solicitations numerous times a day, she said.