Our sister East-Portland Business Association and fellow East Portland Pilot Project participants, Midway Business Association are looking for a web designer to help them build their new website.
A little bit about the Midway Business Association:
The Midway Business Association (MBA)’s mission is to promote the economic prosperity of our member businesses.
Midway is situated roughly “mid-way” between Portland and Mt. Hood. One of the larger districts in Portland, it stretches from I-205 east to Gresham and from Market St. south to the county line. Household income in Midway is $12,000 lower than the citywide average. As is true with low income residents, Midway businesses are disproportionately offline. The MBA website project seeks to bridge the digital divide for businesses in Midway.
The new website is intended to introduce Portlanders to Midway: The Way to work, to shop, to live. Our goal is to strengthen public perception of Midway and increase traffic to our member businesses. While the design will be public and customer facing the site will also be a strong membership benefit by offering Midway Business Association members a business profile page and a spot on a map of the district, a first time online presence for most. Less than 20% of businesses in our district have any online presence, much less an active one.
Despite this digital divide, Midway is home to a unique mix of over 300 businesses, an increasingly diverse population, and incredible natural beauty. MBA seeks a partner to design a website that can seamlessly integrate the vibrancy of the “public facing” assets of Midway while highlighting member businesses.
The new site will ultimately build business district capacity and help market our member businesses. Additionally, we believe this is a great business development opportunity for our website partner to help get Midway businesses online. MBA will use the web site redesign process as a case study for our members; providing guidelines and best practices for their businesses as we aim to transition them to having an online presence of their own.