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Case Studies
Tofino Long Beach Chamber of Commerce
The Client
The Tofino Long Beach Chamber of Commerce is made up of over two-thirds of the Tofino, B.C. business community and focuses on helping local businesses thrive by increasing their connections and capabilities, contributing to a positive local business climate.
Key Project Features
The Need for Change
The Tofino Long Beach Chamber of Commerce launched a unique project to create a mobile-oriented website that would introduce local residents to the shops and services available to them in this beautiful but relatively isolated coastal community.
The goal was to increase the purchasing of local products and services in Tofino by locals, while highlighting the community’s character.
The project would primarily be aimed at local Tofino and west coast residents but would also be of interest to visitors.
The Path for Change
After careful consideration and discussions with the Chamber of Commerce, PathWise decided on an approach that would
- Engage locals to shop locally by providing easier access to information on local businesses all in one place
- Use from-scratch design and web development to highlight store hours, discounts, and other key business details
- Focus on lightweight design and responsive elements for mobile users
- Provide our expertise along with local capacity building through active mentorship of a Tofino-based user experience designer
- Ensure the website would be user friendly for them to maintain and update
The Approach
PathWise Solutions developed Try Local Tofino, a custom WordPress site with a mobile-first designed theme. The site’s entire functionality is driven by our Formidable Pro forms systems and integration with Google Maps is tied in to this forms system.
Collaboration
A unique feature of this project that we are especially proud of was our collaboration with and mentoring of a local Tofino-based user experience (UX) designer, who was integrated into the team at our invitation, in order to help build the Tofino community’s home-grown web development capacity.
Web Development
Key features of the web application include a database-driven business directory that we built using Formidable Pro that can be easily expanded and updated by staff. The directory includes automatic Google Map integration based on the business address and automatic highlighting of the business’s opening hours based on the day of the week.
Design
Our design choices for the website intentionally reflect the setting and branding of Tofino. Colours and typography were selected with the mobile user experience in mind, as the web site/application is intended to be used primarily by local residents as they go about their daily business with their smartphones.
Results
PathWise Solutions was able to build an attractive, responsive, mobile-friendly website for the Tofino Long Beach Chamber of Commerce that has seen active use as well as an increase of interest in local business for the Tofino region.
