Case Study - Gippsland Business Connect (powered by Localised)

“One of the key features we wanted to implement within the new website was to allow business owners and community members to upload expert blog articles, business news and events.”

“Our old web application was visually clunky, had poor performance and it was a struggle to add extra features. The team at GippsTech were able to help us design and build a new platform from scratch in the space of 5 months. This update allowed us to expand our local business impact Australia wide following the initial launch.” 

-Theo Williams, founder of Localised

Gippsland Business Connect is a digital community for local businesses to help connect, collaborate, and raise their profile with potential new customers. With over 1000 local businesses utilising the platform, and articles, news and events being published regularly by local businesses, it’s one of the most visited business websites in Gippsland. 

The software for Gippsland Business Connect was developed by GippsTech for our client, Localised, which has now gone on to use this software to roll out similar local business platforms for over 60 councils and corporates Australia-wide.

GippsTech was approached by Localised at the start of 2018 to develop a software platform to help local businesses to connect across Gippsland. They’d previously run a pilot of a similar platform in Geelong, which was successful in helping Geelong enterprises find local suppliers, and keep their spending in the area. However, their pilot website was slow and lacked the features required to make it a standout digital hub. In addition, the software that the pilot platform was built on was proving to be difficult to edit and extend with desired features. Without the integral features that were required to allow for community generated content and analytics, Localised was struggling to meet their vision using this technology. 

The primary goals of the new platform was for Localised to connect more local businesses, keep more dollars local and provide valuable information to local councils so that they could support more local business in their area.

“One of the key features we wanted to implement within the new website was to allow business owners and community members to upload expert blog articles, business news and events. It was important to us that these businesses could engage and connect with one another. In addition to this, we wanted to feed this data back to council members, so they had an understanding of what was happening in their area, and could collect valuable information.” 

We initially worked with Localised on a review of the existing platform, but soon found that the issues would be difficult and time-consuming to fix.

A redesign of the platform was needed, so our team at GippsTech worked with Localised to rebuild their system, with Gippsland Business Connect being the first website launched on the new technology.

For a project of this calibre, we had a tight deadline of only 5 months to launch. There were some very complex and key elements which had to be personally designed by the expert team at GippsTech. User testing and design improvements all needed to be completed within the timeframe, too. By working closely with Localised, we were able to deliver all the core features of their previous platform, as well as a number of new features that had been highly requested by their Council customers and business users, in time for their Gippsland Business Connect launch. 

One of key components of the website build was the community generated content which allows business owners of Gippsland Business Connect to upload blogs, news and events to the website. All community generated content went through a moderation process to ensure high quality. An admin interface was built within the website to allow the site admins to manage and approve this content quickly and efficiently. Another key element of the website design was ability to add an analytics section in future. This would allow council members to view site activity, engagement, and collect data and an understanding of the local area. As the target customer of Gippsland Business Connect is councils, it was important that information could be gathered and optimised to assist them in making key decisions within their community. We designed the site so that key data about local businesses was easily accessible so that an analytics section could be added in future by Localised's own team.

This bustling online hub has been adapted and created to assist business owners in supporting each other, and providing valuable networking opportunities. Gippsland Business Connect proved to be the best evolution of Localised; and the completion of the project allowed them to roll out to a further 50 councils over a two year period.

The new platform has since continued to be updated with a range of new features and additions such as articles, announcements, an analytics dashboard for councils, and more. Each of these were added by Localised’s own team with just a few additional weeks of development; as we designed the new platform to be easily extensible. The ability to add and extend to the site platform was one of the core requirements for Localised, since their customers - (primarily government and development associations), often have additional custom feature requests based on the needs of their local businesses.

Gippsland Business Connect has become a great locally built digital innovation success story - it’s become both a highly impactful platform in Gippsland, and has enabled similar platforms to be rolled out all across Australia. It goes to show what is possible with a big vision and out-of-the-box thinking. 

GippsTech’s support enabled a technology platform to be designed for extensibility and rapid expansion, which was critical to the success of this high-profile project, as well as to ensuring that Localised could successfully expand this project across Australia and soon internationally.

GippsTech have a team of experts in business innovation, software development and digital marketing strategy, so if you have a big idea or project that you want to bring to life, or if you had an existing app or website built that’s not achieving the results you want, contact us and we’ll see what we can do to help.