The Greater Reading Chamber Alliance (GRCA) is proud to announce that it has been named one of 13 Communications Award of Excellence winners by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) for its website redesign.
GRCA’s Director of Communications & Marketing Leah Fassnacht and Digital Marketing Coordinator Audrey Krupiak managed the six-month long project under the guidance of GRCA member, LaunchDM, Reading.
“This award is a testament to the hard work and careful thought put into this project,” said Fassnacht. “It’s our hope that visitors to our site are able to more easily find the information they need and are able to better understand the important work GRCA does.”
The new website more clearly outlines the mission and vision of the organization. As an entity that combines both economic development and traditional chamber activities, it was important to create a website that better highlighted GRCA’s work. The new site, which features a 36% decrease in the number of pages, includes a stepped-member application form, an extensive event calendar that can be filtered by event type and a more robust overview of the economic, workforce and real estate development tools and programs GRCA offers. The site welcomed 14% more new users and hosted nearly 12% more sessions from the time it launched in August 2021, through the end of the year, compared to the same time in 2020. The site also saw a 15% increase in page views. This increase in traffic was all obtained organically. All new traffic was driven to the site through GRCA’s social media channels and email database.
ACCE’s Awards for Communications Excellence program is designed to showcase top communications and marketing work of chambers of commerce and similar organizations. Several thousand award entries have been submitted since the launch of the competition, which is now in its 37th year.
“Chambers of commerce create community impact, more so now than ever before,” said ACCE President & CEO Sheree Anne Kelly. “Chambers are natural conveners, telling stories that inspire and spur action. That creativity in communications, paired with catalytic leadership within their region, is what earned them this well-deserved recognition.”
The 13 winning entries will now go on to compete for the Best in Show title within their total annual revenue category. The three winning entries will be revealed at ACCE’s annual convention in Indianapolis during the July 27 Awards Show.
A panel of communications and marketing professionals from ten U.S.-based chambers of commerce evaluated entries submitted for this year’s competition. Entries were organized by category — based on the chamber’s annual revenue — and entry type: campaigns, digital media, websites and print and electronic publications.
This is the second ACCE award for Fassnacht and Krupiak, who were previously honored in 2021 for the Rebuild Berks multimedia campaign.
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