Dublin Belfast Economic Corridor (DBEC)
Website Design
Creating a vibrant, accessible website for Ireland’s most important economic region.
Brief
The DBEC is a key economic region for Northern Ireland and Ireland, stretching 100 miles between the island’s two largest cities: Dublin and Belfast.
Mitso had the honour of creating DBEC’s very first website, a one-stop-shop to serve the region’s constituents and showcase its forward-thinking ambitions and global potential.
Goals
Capture DBEC’s ambition
Bring DBEC’s brand to life with engaging front end design, showcasing its vibrant, cross-border potential and connectivity.
Develop optimised website
Streamline key DBEC information with optimised copy focused on regional highlights, encouraging interest in investment opportunities.
Manage working groups
Ensure close collaboration with the DBEC team, Political Advisory group, council teams, and university partners to ensure all groups are properly represented.
Deliver optimal UX
Ensure the site is easy to navigate and info is easy to find through clever design and technical development. Special attention needed for live events sign up and virtual events support.
Solution
Following a highly competitive tender process, Mitso was selected as the preferred agency to take on this important project. We worked collaboratively with DBEC and partners, crafting a site that would serve as a powerful resource for businesses, investors, and residents alike who are ready to seize the opportunities the initiative presents.
To properly reflect the region’s extraordinary offering and unique potential we custom-built a distinctive front-end design. We developed high fidelity mockups for the DBEC team to review, ensuring the design aligned with the brand’s identity. We even chose to incorporate video material, reiterating the region’s beautiful scenery and location to elevate the site’s appearance further.
Especially given the breadth of information the website needed to offer, we dedicated a lot of time to creating the perfect user journey. This meant wire framing every page of the site, mapping out every navigation visitors could take, and streamlining all content to ensure it was clear and easy to explore.
This included the creation of a dedicated Partner Hub, with specialised pages for each council area and university partner. Each partner’s page is unique and offers further insights relevant to their region; there’s also tabular functionality to split out content consistently across each Council and Partner.
Following an in-depth workshop and our own careful analysis on the Corridor’s knowledge-driven potential, and aided by extensive keyword research, we developed copy that is both informative and SEO optimised to live across the site.
Recognising DBEC’s role in organising and delivering both online and offline events across the region, we created a multi-faceted events functionality. Using custom-built forms, the site can enable event signups and facilitate live online events like webinars. Users can also easily reference the latest DBEC news and recent media materials via integrated site feed.
Another key priority was and is accessibility across the site. Every choice – from colours, images, text, alt text, to navigation settings and compatibility with plug ins and external tools – was created, tested, and optimised to ensure the site is accessible to all users. This also includes a Google Translate integration, making the site operational in multiple languages.
With bases in Newry and Dublin, both international and local clients, and a global team, Mitso was uniquely primed to take on this project.
We have seen first-hand the power of encouraging growth and connectivity across regions, and we’re incredibly proud to have supported this vital piece of the DBEC story.
This new website will help to deliver on the initiative’s vision of achieving sustainable economic growth along the corridor.
Mitso's expertise was instrumental in developing DBEC's new website, effectively capturing our vision and the corridor's potential. Their collaborative approach and innovative design have provided us with a dynamic platform to engage stakeholders and promote sustainable economic growth along the corridor. The response has been wonderful — partners, stakeholders and the wider business community from near and far have praised the site, helping to elevate DBEC’s profile and momentum in ways we never imagined.
Elaine McAlinden, Partnership Officer
Hooked on brand.
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