Content Marketing Today

600% Traffic Increase Follows Naples Chamber Web Redesign

The new website has proved to be an invaluable resource for members, business owners, and visitors.

In a previous article that focused on their print magazine, we wrote in depth about the many challenges that all membership organizations such as Chambers of commerce face when it comes to proving the value to their members.  Beyond those challenges, a small staff must manage a wide variety of tasks, services, and events.

The much improved Naples Chamber website launched in the fourth quarter of 2006 with a powerful combination of business content, community information, and e-commerce functionality.  The site now enables the chamber to provide a much more value with much less effort.

Here’s exactly what they did to produce such a dramatic positive difference with an effective online content marketing strategy:

NaplesChamber.org was built on antiquated technology, was hard to manage, and offered good but limited content. The biggest challenge in creating a great chamber website is that it must serve multiple constituencies: chamber members, prospective members, business owners and executives, and tourists and visitors. Moreover, although much of the content is relatively timeless, a significant chunk of it must be kept current. In addition, because it is an event hub, it must provide e-commerce capabilities.

Chambers and associations today require much more from a website than does an average business. For example, the Naples Chamber has to manage their membership, events, and electronic communications–in addition to providing a broad range of content. This content must be valuable to their members, to the business community, and to individuals who want information about the greater Naples area.

The Chamber partnered with a Naples-based advertising and web design firm, ISOOSI that fully understood the importance of first-rate content and a user-friendly interface. ISOOSI is unusual in that their understanding of content marketing is just as strong as their ability to design great websites.

To provide robust transactional capabilities, The Chamber also licensed Web-based software technology from Web Link International. This provided excellent back-end capabilities that integrated with the Chamber accounting system—and an easy to use management system. In addition, it provided all of the e-commerce tools required to manage dozens of yearly events. Very importantly, the website is easy and inexpensive to maintain by chamber staffers (an easy-to-use content management system is now in place).

Today, Napleschamber.org draws a broad range of traffic from members, business executives, and a host of tourists and visitors. It has a simple and intuitive design that makes it obvious when you reach the home page exactly where you should go for the kind of information you need.

After the redesign, web traffic increased as members, residents, and tourists accessed much improved content more frequently. In addition, the website is now the go-to spot to learn about and register for Chamber events. This makes it much easier to manage dozens of existing events and to provide even more member centric benefits in the future.

The website is chock-full of invaluable content that includes:

• What you need to know if you’re planning to relocate a business to Southwest Florida
• How to start a business locally
• How to run your business more effectively
• A comprehensive business directory with e-mail and mapping capability
• Information about Chamber business education events
• Information about Chamber networking events
• The ability to sign up and pay for chamber events online
• Comprehensive tourist and visitor information
• Comprehensive relocation information
• And on and on and on…

In short, NaplesChamber.org is an extraordinary resource for the community which provides a treasure trove of information for its members and for their current and future customers.

After the redesign, web traffic increased dramatically as members, residents, and tourists accessed much improved content more frequently. September 2007 visitors numbered 45,729. That’s an increase of more than 600% from September of 2006.

The Chamber continues to work closely with ISOOSI to maintain and improve NaplesChamber.org. To understand exactly how the chamber was able to successfully implement a comprehensive content marketing strategy, click here to read our first article.