For Starters, Don’t Send Them Off Your Site.
It is perhaps the most basic principle in modern digital marketing: keep users on your website. When a business comes to your website they are looking for local data and want to learn more about your community.
A website visit presents a golden opportunity to convince a business of the attractiveness of your community.
You want to capitalize on their interest and keep them focused on your strengths, your data, and your story.
So why would you send that business off your website, where you lose control of the information they see and have no idea if they will even return? You wouldn’t.
Keeping users on your site is probably the most basic element of digital marketing.
This is why up-to-date online site selection apps like GIS WebTech’s Recruit provide all the features required for modern economic development directly within the app: it keeps users on your site and focused on your community.
Sounds pretty basic, because it is.
Unfortunately, legacy apps cannot provide the full set of modern functionality inside the app. Developed years ago on second-tier GIS platforms, they lack the features required for todays’ competitive economic development landscape. So they attempt a workaround by linking to third-party sites that can provide some of the missing features. In doing so, they violate a cardinal rule and send users off your site, away from your data and your story.
The most common example is a link to Google Earth, a third-party consumer app not designed for business use. Legacy providers link to Google Earth because they cannot provide the in-app 3D and comprehensive virtual site visits that modern economic development demands. Since they do not have in-app 3D and virtual site visits, they send users off your site to Google Earth.
GIS WebTech’s Recruit is the only site selection technology with the full suite of required features inside the app, including in-app 3D and virtual site visits. Unlike legacy apps, Recruit never sends users off your site.
How does Recruit maintain the latest features inside the app? Simple: Recruit is the only app built on the world’s leading GIS platform, Esri, and adopts new features continuously as Esri rolls them out. GIS WebTech is the only certified Esri partner in economic development, and only Recruit stays on the cutting edge with features like in-app 3D and virtual site visits.
Your website should keep the user engaged and focused on your community, and your online site selection app should support your efforts by providing all the features you need directly in the app. It should never send users off your site to compensate for its own lack of functionality.