The Town of Vermilion has developed a new website with developer eSolutionsGroup to better serve residents and further support economic development.
For years, the town has operated their website through wordpress, a free to use service. In 2020, a request for proposals was sent out to rebuild the town’s website. The town agreed to go with eSolutionsGroup to rebuild the website purely using grant funding through Alberta’s Community and Regional Economic Support (CARES) grant. Chief of Economic Development Mary Lee Prior reports that no taxpayer money was used in the development of the site.
The site has various new modules to better serve residents and is designed to better promote the town’s economic development. The newsfeed and council feed have been updated and include new features, residents can report concerns and formally ask for the Mayor or Council members to speak at an event. There is also “The View”, which features photos of the community, and the website is now mobile friendly. In addition, the Town calendar is now within the website, and residents can submit events to be added to the calendar.
“We encourage all residents to download the Town of Vermilion app,” said Prior, as she explained residents can receive notifications about storms, street closures, water notifications, and more.
“It’s exciting for us,” Prior comments, “We’re going more modern and keeping up with our regional competition.”
It was recently announced that the Town of Vermilion received their second national economic development award for marketing due to the #VermilionOnlineFestival which was hosted in April 2020. “The first national award was in 2019 for our take it to the lake campaign which was in collaboration with multiple municipalities, but this one is just for Vermilion,” Prior said.