Palliser Economic Partnership (PEP) is the recent recipient of the 2011 Canada Marketing Award from the Economic Developers Association of Canada for their new website that is streamlined to contain a wealth of information without appearing cluttered.
“We needed a site that could help us promote our assets to the world and buld pride here at home,” said Alan Hyland, chair of PEP, in a written statement. “The challenge was to compress an enormous amount of information into a format that was attractive and easy to use.”
Walter Valentini, executive director for Palliser Economic Partnership said the new website is user-friendly for municipalities, business people, and for individuals looking to relocate.
“What can be frustrating for people visiting some websites is they are too busy and cluttered. So, a lot of effort went into the design work. Our target audience is business people and chambers of commerce, municipal councils, and community orgranizations. We want to be a source of information for them,” ,” said Valentini.
“People who visit the PEP website are not looking for tourist information. They are looking for information on a community that they may do business in or move to. For instance, a teacher may be looking to relocate to this area and wants to know what is being offered for services in the community. They can easily pick from the list of municipalities and get the information they are looking for,” he added.
Representatives from PEP were in Peterborough, Ontario last week to receive the award.
PEP, founded in 2000, is a regional alliance made up of municipal representatives from the region’s 21 communities in the southeast corner of the province, including County of Forty Mile, Cypress County, County of Newell No. 4, Special Area no. 2, and Special Area No. 3.
The three main focus areas of the alliance are to promote the area as a healthy place to conduct business, support ballancced and sustainable growth in member communities, and to create wealth in order to ‘support the quality of life through the promotion of entrepreneurship, facilitation of the growth, and expansion of existing business, and business attraction’.