Getting businesses online in Barrie & Simcoe County 💻

Background

In 2019, the City of Barrie and the County of Simcoe decided to join an initiative called Digital Main Street, where a team of specialists would be assembled to help local businesses with their online presence. This program was originally intended to only last 12 months, however due to the success of the program, it was extended until March 2021! I was chosen to help with this task after showcasing a video of a platform I was working on to educate other programmers. Our dedication to education was our key to success with the hundreds of businesses we consulted.

Initial Strategy

Helping businesses who did not have a digital presence meant we needed to go the old fashion route: door-to-door. From there, we were able to speak directly with each business and learn their needs and more importantly, their pains. Some needed a website ASAP, while others needed help with their social media, some were looking for guidance and some wanted to be educated. With this knowledge, we then began to implement a specialized plan for each business.

For each business, I would sit down to determine what goal to focus on. One such business was Bohemia Barrie. By the end of the program, Bohemia had a fully functional Squarespace website, with ecommerce functionality, and were comfortable using the platform. That last one is huge. It meant that they would keep the site fresh! If you want to learn more about the process I took with Bohemia, check it out.

Educating on a larger scale

Each year, Barrie hosts Xcelerate Summit, Central Ontario's Premier Business Event. In between scheduled events, Xcelerate hosts their “Learning Series.” We were tasked with hosting the seminar, along with marketing it!

Educating a crowd of 75+ business owners was quite different from the 1-on-1 we had been doing up until now. However, we were able to utilize all of the door-to-door knowledge that we gathered, the pain points businesses had, and we were able to condense it into three 1 hour presentations.

The seminar was an interesting note in my life, as nearly all of the businesses who had attended were plagued with the same issues as the ones I had met 1-on-1.

Taking the story online

Building off of the success of the Learning Series, we rolled out several webinar series to continue educating businesses en masse. This meant the creation of a whole slew of webinars, from social media to websites. It also meant the creation of slideshows and deliverables that we could give to each business as a sort of “care package”.

Animated gifs are a live saver (and a money saver) 🎉

Outcomes

We helped hundreds of small businesses

This was the biggest result by far. Combined, the team of specialists were able to connect with over 200 businesses and help with their digital presence (from a 1 hour call to up to 10 hours of help per business). We were able to help businesses activate numerous tools such as Google My Business. We helped explain their analytics, and we even got to make a few websites.

Webinars for anyone to access

All of the webinars that we hosted have been recorded and archived for viewing for any business owner on the Barrie website for anyone to view.

Appreciation

This program is what transformed web design from a hobby into a career for me, and I wouldn't be here today if this program did not exist. I want to thank all of the partners involved, and I look forward to the day where we collaborate once again.