Last week, we launched the newly re-designed Greater Richmond Partnership web site. The Greater Richmond Partnership is a smart group of people that are very important to the area economy and job market. Their purpose is to attract domestic and international businesses that are expanding or relocating. Once businesses relocate or expand here, the GRP has a great retention program to keep businesses thriving. They represent the City of Richmond and the surrounding counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico.
In mid-2008, we performed a web site assessment for the GRP to help them identify ways to make their site more effective. We compiled an exhaustive snapshot of what similar economic development firms were doing on the web, we tested the web site with real clients from around the country, identified their core audience segments and brainstormed ways to change the site to make it easier to navigate and plan for future expansion.
Having constructed a roadmap for success, we designed the site to be vibrant, forward-looking and appeal to all core audience segments. The challenge in doing this was that the core audiences seek very different information, and the site needs to keep all audiences’ attention.
For some audiences, we sought to show personality and vibrance of the Greater Richmond area. For others, we had to create intelligent tools to allow them to collect just the data they need.
The result is what you see at grpva.com. From the Visual Visit that invites you to thumb through photos of the area to videos of businesspersons talking about the region, to a technically-advanced blog to social media integration, to a report builder that collects any or all data the Partnership has to offer and print or save it as a PDF.
The site was completely re-architected to make information easy to find. Related content is displayed throughout the site to keep the reader engaged.
The site runs on a completely custom Expression Engine installation. This content management system allows GRP staff to update and access the parts of the site that they are responsible for.
The News & Publications area provides one single repository for news items, company announcements, press releases and industry news that can be used to dynamically feed data to multiple web sites that the GRP operates. The area also generates an RSS feed to keep readers notified of news and updates that occur.
