IEDC Agrees That Quality Web Presence Should Be City Priority

IRONWOOD, MI - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - The Ironwood Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) board met yesterday to consider two central issues -- renewal of the US-2 Industrial Park billboard and the renewal of the Ironwood Daily Globe website ad.

The contract on the billboard on US-2 is about to expire. The Board discussed several options, including the purchase of a permanent sign of their own near the park that essentially serve the same purpose as the current billboard. The Board decided to give Community Development Director Dan Petersen the authority to add the City's website address to the existing billboard until the current billboard contract exprires, provided the total cost is under $300. They agreed to table the renewal of the billboard until a later date. The reason for tabling the idea is that they might want to focus more on website development and improvement of the City's website than to waste nearly $3,600 per year on a billboard that doesn't appear to be too overly effective.

Dan Petersen introduced the proposal to renew the Ironwood Daily Globe website ad. He explained that the 125x94 pixel front page web ad that appeared in the Daily Globe cost the IEDC approximately $99/month. According to an email from the Globe's webmaster, Phil Watson, the site receives an average of over 800,000 hits.

When a web host quotes overall hit averages, they refer to every visual on a website as a hit. For example, if there are 40 photos and 30 ads on a web page, the total hits for the photos and ads on that page equals 70 each and every time someone accesses a website. Front page unique webpage hits are a more accurate indicator of the actual amount of exposure a website is receiving. For example, the Chronicle currently has just over 115,000 front page hits, but our webhost reports our overall hit average to be over 2,000,000 to date for the year 2008.

Several issues were brought up concerning the web ad. The fact that the ad attracts people to the front page of the City's website and not to the portion that relates to the Industrial Park makes it necessary for the end user to navigate through the City's site to find information on the Park. The hyperlink to the ad would need to be changed to the URL for the Industrial Park page of the City website.

City Manager Scott Erickson told the Board that the City wanted to do a complete overhaul of the City's existing website. He said it doesn't do a good enough job of "promoting the City" and that it wasn't maintained like it needed to be to be effective. He said that requests for proposals will need to be made, and that prices would need to be examined before any decisions could be made on making needed changes to the site.  

Dave Ramme questioned the logic of renewing the ad if it is sending people to an "less than adequate" website.

The Board agreed that the City needed to upgrade the City's web presence, and that a comprehensive change was necessary -- a change that had links to all of the various boards, committees, and authorities as well as links to the Chamber of Commerce for Ironwood and surrounding cities. Jim Huss expressed the need to start working with other communities and making the entire area a desired destination.

The Board agreed to purchase the Globe ad on a month-to-month basis. At the suggestion of Dave Ramme, they also agreed to compose a letter of support to the City Commission for making needed improvements to the City website.

Dan Petersen notified the Board that Burton Industries has asked to postpone the processing of their request for Revolving Loan assistance. They are in the process of obtaining new information for their request and they wanted to update their request at a later date. Dave Ramme noted that the expansion of the facility was truly a "top notch" operation. Before he visited the facility he was under the impression that their expansion space was some kind of dark, musty, storage space, but he was totally impressed with the quality of the structure and impressive facility. He said that the owners of the company are constantly putting personal investments into the business. He said that they recently hired 10 new people and that 5 more would be added to the payroll as well. Several of the Board members decided to take tours of the facility in the near future.

Dan Petersen provided the Board members with information sent to him by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). The information explains the guidelines for lending money that the IEDC are required to follow. This information will be made available to our readers shortly.

Before the meeting adjourned, DIDA member Steve Frank addressed the IEDC stating that the City's website definitely needed to be upgraded. He stressed the need to have it integrated with other entities throughout the area. He suggested to the members of the Board that they check out Marquette's and Ashland's websites to see what can be done. Frank said that the billboard, in his opinion, is not an effective use of the IEDC's money. He said that quality internet presence would be much effective in attracting new industry and business to the area.

The Board was in full agreement that web presence was critical and that the City's site needed to be improved. After a brief discussion on possible changes to the site, the Board agreed to adjourn.