Fast Growing Texas City Serves as Laboratory for New State-of-the-Art EDC Website Design

Savvy Economic Development Corporations are leveraging the experience of one of the fastest growing cities in the US to get a customized top-of-the-line EDC website. Community Showcase, a new specialized EDC website offering, gives any size municipality the ability to continuously attract brokers and site selectors with the click of a mouse.

When you think about it, an EDC's Web site is really the public face of the community

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) October 10, 2008 -- A new website offering designed exclusively for Economic Development Corporations is starting to turn heads in some of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Developed by eLevel in collaboration with the Frisco, Texas EDC, the new Community Showcase Web site allows EDC's to powerfully market their communities and attract interest from high profile developers, national site selectors and commercial brokers.

"The Frisco EDC partnered with eLevel to optimize our Web site for over 5 years," said James L. Gandy, CEcD, President at the Frisco, Texas EDC. "Frisco's EDC site compares favorably to just about any EDC in the country." By analyzing the critical information sought by brokers and site selectors, and working diligently to make it easily accessible, a Community Showcase site maximizes the power of a city's most important marketing tool. "All of the information is available in three clicks or less. We don't want to lose out on a big development because they can't find what they are looking for on our site," says Gandy.

The Frisco EDC site garnered a lot of attention from other North Texas communities. In 2006, after Frisco won Community of the Year and was named one of the Top 10 Fastest Growing Cities in the U.S., other municipalities wanted to know their secret. "Even though we compete against other cities in our area to attract development, we were so happy with the work done by eLevel that we recommended them to many of our neighbors" said Gandy. Since that time, the cities of Allen, Murphy, Sachse, Prosper, and Princeton, Texas have all signed up for Community Showcase sites. Each site has been designed with a highly distinctive look and feel that captures the unique spirit of these growing and vibrant cities.

According to Colby Nate, Vice President of Development of eLevel, research indicates that there are six key features needed in a quality EDC Web site: 1) Criteria based property search; 2) GIS property information maps; 3) Community and demographic information that can be easily updated by the EDC staff; 4) Targeted clusters and incentive information; 5) a "Public Information Room" to post EDC meeting minutes and agendas, and; 6) a "News Room" to post press releases. "We have designed Community Showcase to be modular," said Nate, "so even a city with a very small budget can grow into a complete solution over time."

"When you think about it, an EDC's Web site is really the public face of the community," says James Gandy of Frisco. "All EDCs need to make sure that their face is out there, and smiling, every day of the week."

For additional information about the Community Showcase Web site, visit http://www.edcwebsites.com or contact Scott Heikkila at eLevel.

About eLevel:
eLevel is a 10-year-old website design company based in Irving Texas, specializing in the development and hosting of Economic Development websites.

Contact:
Scott Heikkila, President
eLevel
972-823-8000

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