In 2023, Envision Saint John became the agency responsible for economic development & tourism promotion services under the newly appointed Fundy Regional Service Commission. As our work expanded, there was a need to adjust layout, structure and messaging on our website.
We saw success in this sales focused website that was launched in May of 2022, but it quickly became apparent that we couldn’t forget the need to not only use the site as a sales tool. We needed to also provide a pride of place and be clear and concise on how our internal team is working to support stakeholders and partners who are moving the region forward.
A website revamp was in order with various goals top of mind:
Improving visibility of the communities served was a relatively simply fix – we updated maps to include the new Fundy Rural District and updated imagery for representation. We also worked to pull in relevant growth stories that display a range of reasons the region is good place to build a life – featuring real people, places and businesses across a wide variety of sectors.
One of our core services is to collect and share relevant data to supports strategy development and decision making that will foster growth. The Dashboard is a living platform that changes iteratively over time to improve its ability to reflect the region’s growth performance. With continuous updates and maintenance, the Dashboard has seen an increase in traffic with 2,014 views for the first six months of 2024, compared to 2,631 for all of 2023.
Articulating the role of the agency clearly to users and stakeholders was a necessary addition. Our team got to work and built out an effective How We Help section. Showcasing the agency’s work to convene a large ecosystem and help create successful strategies that attract and sustain investment for our region. Our six areas of focus were blown out with specific landing pages – informing the user of our role, where we provide navigation supports, examples of tools that are available for partners to utilize, as well as contact information for each area of service, and examples of real-life growth stories that align to the work. Since launching this section of the site in January of 2024, we have been able to use this content through key strategic communication efforts. The Entrepreneurship & Business Growth addition has seen 1,785 views, with 1,223 unique users and the team has seen an increase in client support leads – up 115% from 2023.
Finally, an online service portal was developed to allow new residents to find specific services to meet their needs based on language, age & residency status. Working with the settlement sector, our team was able to provide a detailed, customizable tool and integrate a universal translation widget to support residents in an impactful way. This section of the website has seen more than 10K views to date since launch in January, across ten different languages. It remains the second most viewed page on our site today.
Total site users are up 48.3% in 2024 vs. 2023 – with an increase in 51% new users visiting the site year-over-year.