Insights
At a glance, economic development websites might look like a community brochure site, but scratch the surface and you’ll find a website that does much more. Where a company website might influence someone to buy a product or service, an economic development website can influence decisions worth millions of dollars in investment.
While both need professional design and compelling content, EDOs face a distinct set of challenges. Their websites must support investment decisions, serve a range of audiences, present structured data, and often must meet compliance and transparency requirements. These demands require a specialized approach.
Economic development websites exist to help communities compete for investment. Unlike most business websites, they aren’t trying to sell a product or service. They’re helping businesses evaluate whether a community is the right place to invest and grow. The website has to answer questions like:
Does this community have space for my business?
What’s the tax climate?
Is there infrastructure to support my business?
Is the community growing?
Does the community have an available workforce?
How’s the quality of life here?
These types of questions help site selectors assess the risk of investing in a community, and economic development websites need to answer them clearly and confidently.
Most websites only serve one or a few specific audiences, but economic development websites work differently. A website for a sporting goods store, for example, will serve people interested in sporting goods. Even if that audience is broad, the site still has a single purpose.
Economic development websites, on the other hand, serve audiences both outside and inside their community, each with distinct goals and needs. Site selectors, developers, prospective businesses, relocating talent, and even visitors are looking to understand a community and learn what makes it a great place to invest or spend time in. At the same time, local businesses, residents, the media, and partner organizations need other types of information like grant applications, job postings, and recent news. Bringing this information together helps tell a complete story, and supporting such a diverse audience requires more than thoughtful content. It also requires organizing information around user journeys and providing tools that support data exploration.
One reason these user journeys are so different is that economic development websites manage content structured around data, and generic website templates often struggle to present the information in a way that is both organized and user-friendly. Property listings often include detailed information like acreage, square footage, or zoning. Employer directories provide business locations and workforce size. Large collections of data files, applications, and other downloads need to be easily accessible. Generic website templates rarely provide the flexibility needed to organize this level of information.
These are exactly the kinds of challenges EDSuite was created to solve. Instead of forcing organizations to adapt to generic website tools, EDSuite includes purpose-built economic development tools that make it easier to organize information and manage complex data while creating an intuitive experience for every visitor.
Beyond supporting business decisions and helping users find information, economic development websites also have to support the day-to-day responsibilities of the organization. For many organizations, websites also have transparency and compliance responsibilities that go beyond marketing. Their websites serve as a trusted source for public information, making it an important part of building trust with the local community, stakeholders, and prospects. EDSuite helps streamline these ongoing responsibilities by making it easier to publish, organize, and maintain public information in an accessible format.
When a website plays a role in representing an entire community while attracting investment and supporting existing businesses, generic solutions often aren’t enough. EDSuite wasn’t built to be another generic website platform. It was designed specifically for what EDOs need. By combining economic development tools with a user-friendly platform, EDSuite helps organizations create better experiences for their staff and the businesses and stakeholders they serve.
