Downtown Orlando

Revitalizing a City

In the midst of an economic recession the City of Orlando’s Downtown Development Board has been facing some of its toughest challenges. To reach out to its residents and revitalize downtown, the City has been going digital, paving the way for new branding initiatives and further pushing economic growth.

Their goal? Overhaul DowntownOrlando.com into a usable and successful resource to promote and grow the city.

Who better to step up to this challenge than the team of Downtown Orlando residents, Purple, Rock, Scissors? As local urbanites we couldn’t help but go all out on this project.

Catering to a Diverse Audience

One would imagine the biggest challenge with a project at this scale would be the data migration of every shop, bar, club, business and venue in the Downtown Orlando area. That was actually pretty easy. The difficult part was accommodating for every visitor who checks out Downtown Orlando.

Resident in down town? …gotta make sure you have “Things to Do”. New business opening up? …gotta provide access to statistics and resources. Tourist from out of state? …gotta introduce you to Orlando. Everyone and their grandmother passing through Central Florida usually visits Downtown Orlando, and everyone is looking for everything besides the kitchen sink. And even if you are, there’s shops that sell those too.

So Many “Things to Do” with just One Site

To meet this challenge, we’ve taken what many would consider a complex navigational nightmare and turned it into one of the most intuitive and diverse government websites. Building on the user’s mental model, it only made sense to allow users to search for dining or nightspots, and then pull up a map to find the nearest parking on the exact same page.

Through strategic planning we’ve broken down the entire city, targeted demographics appropriately, and left nothing to chance.

Leaving No Feature Unturned

This site is jam-packed. Between interactive Google Maps, news & updates, events & RSVPs, photo and video galleries, hotel listings, unique neighborhoods, downloadable coupons, interactive polls, ad integration, behavioral tracking, and an MLS Real Estate section… we run out of breath just trying to explain this site.

We even set up an automatic sync between the events hosted on CityofOrlando.net and DowntownOrlando.com to make sure everyone knows exactly what’s going on in their city at all times.

On top of all this, we’ve architected a mobile version of the site, targeting audiences on the go. Check it out on your phone for the full experience.

A Growing City Needs a Growing Website

Rather than just unleashing this behemoth and walking away, we’ve partnered with the City of Orlando for the long run. We continuously help them strategize and improve their site through metrics monitoring, conversion analysis, retargeting campaigns, and ongoing optimization efforts. With an iterative support process, we keep the City of Orlando growing and going.