Does your Chamber of Commerce need a new website?

07 Mar Does your Chamber of Commerce need a new website?

“I love our website,” said Greater Beverly Chamber of Commerce John Somes the other day when we were meeting about content updates for the chamber website. “Other chamber websites are all the same.”

When it came time for a new website for the Chamber a couple of years ago, I really wanted to help and give the Chamber an especially nice website. It is, after all, the epicenter of the business community in the area and a much-used resource. I did my research and saw that other chambers were using boxed-templated services such as chambermaster, and they were all very much the same, with little styling, and, kind of boring I’m sad to say. I wanted more for the Greater Beverly Chamber, something that better reflected our mission, our brand, and captured our personality. Not all chambers are the same, so let’s stand out! I also thought it was kind of weird that these other chambers did not find a resource amongst their own membership to design their new site. What happened to “Keep It Local”?

We made our wish list.  The new site had to be a digital representation of our printed member directory and include EVERYTHING that was in there!  That’s pretty comprehensive!!  In addition we wanted:

• Event Calendaring and ticketing
• integration with existing merchant services
• social media integration
• browsable business directory
• tourist area, with weather widget
• Town information areas for our coverage areas
• job center for members to post jobs
• information on all of our programs
• contact forms
• membership sign up of course
• online newsletters
• integrated Voice of Business video series
• blogging
• analytics
• sponsorship areas
• of course security and backups are essential!

We packed in ALOT of features and work with the chamber continuously on updating the content whenever needed.  The site gets ALOT of traffic we’re pleased to say and alot of compliments!  Because it’s built on wordpress there is SO much more we can do for the chamber when need comes up, including things like constant contact integration.

We proved you CAN have it all when it comes to a chamber website, so why settle for the same ol’ boxed standard ugly website?   If your chamber is rethinking their website this year, give us a call!  We are big believers in the power of the Chamber of Commerce, and we’d LOVE to be your Chamber’s website partner!  Near or far, we can come to you, or come to you “virtually” using Skype and screen share technologies!

Get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!