Calgary Economic Development Website Redesign and Replatform
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Our website is an all-encompassing resource on Calgary’s economy and is our central brand storytelling vehicle to deliver content to our community. To appeal to our diverse community, the content promotes working, living and doing business in Calgary.
https://www.calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com/
We identified that the former site was not meeting the needs of our community, nor was it representative of our city brand and a best-in-class economic development agency. With content-heavy pages that lacked intuitive navigation and visual engagement, the site was not delivering a positive user experience.
PROJECT PURPOSE AND EFFECTIVENESS
The purpose was to evolve the site into a content and mobile-first platform with a seamless structure, easy navigation, and a smart, intuitive design. Our team needed to respond better to opportunities for digital storytelling with flexible design components.
Our content strategy focuses on stories about people and community. We feature over 230 local industry partners and community organizations on our sector pages, Team Calgary partners displayed throughout and thought leadership Newsroom profiles. Our Homepage invites all to explore working and living in Calgary with an engaging video to tell our story as a community catalyst. Our Careers and Live & Work pages are top trafficked pages highlighting the depth of our city’s opportunities and livability.
PROJECT CHALLENGES
As the go-to resource for Calgary’s economy, we are the keeper of large volumes of information and resources, such as research studies, reports, fact sheets, and more. There was a challenge in scoping a suitable CMS, Silverstripe, that was powerful, yet secure enough to host this much information.
The other key obstacle was deciding which content to keep, remove, and repurpose from our previous site through developing customer journey maps for each audience.
TARGET AUDIENCE
The core audiences for our website are broken into four main categories:
- Individuals looking for Calgary-related information
- Individuals looking to move to Calgary
- Businesses looking to move or expand their operations in Calgary
- Calgary-based businesses looking to grow locally or abroad
Our web users are primarily aged 25-34 and 35-44 but the site is designed for talent and business decision makers across our eight key industrial sectors, research and media, as well as community leaders and influencers.
DESIGN STRATEGY
Through a collaboration with Team Calgary partner and digital marketing agency Evans Hunt, we created a site unlike what most people would expect from an economic development agency. The new site design gives us the ability to bring our brand to life while delivering an impactful message to key audiences.
We placed an emphasis on bold, high-impact visuals, such as wide margin photography panels, embedding our sector videos throughout the site, and custom illustrations. Our sub-sites are incorporated into one backend environment to create a cohesive brand message.
This project set us up with a framework that allows us to evolve with our user needs and the economic development landscape.
