DiscoverNEPA Tourism Platform Increased Site Visits 138% Year-Over-Year
Results
138%
year-over-year growth in site visits (2 YEARS POST LAUNCH)
61%
traffic driven by Things To Do, CALENDAR, & EVENTS
COLAB partnered with DiscoverNEPA to launch a digital brand and tourism platform promoting Northeastern Pennsylvania as a premier place to live, work, and play.
Northeastern Pennsylvania faced a problem common to many post-industrial regions: an aging workforce and a steady loss of young, skilled professionals to larger metro areas. DiscoverNEPA was established in 2017 to counter that trend, with a mission to build and promote the 10-county region as a premier place to live, attract new talent, and encourage relocations.
As a brand-new organization, DiscoverNEPA had no existing website, no analytics, and no digital presence. They asked COLAB to:
Promote NEPA’s quality of life and amenities to retain young professionals who grew up in the area
Recruit talented individuals to relocate to the region
Brand the region as one of the nation’s best places to live
Give local nonprofits a promotional tool to build awareness and volunteerism
The site had to fight the “brain drain” by making everything the region offers easy to find in one place, for both potential residents and visitors.
Solution
COLAB built the DiscoverNEPA website and digital visual brand from the ground up. After extensive competitor analysis and research to identify NEPA’s differentiators, COLAB and the DiscoverNEPA team prioritized three initiatives:
A modern digital brand, with responsive design and a frictionless user experience, to capture and engage the target audiences
A searchable database of all events, quality-of-life assets, and amenities so users could quickly understand everything available in NEPA
Content and features that encourage Northeastern Pennsylvania’s best and brightest to stay by showcasing the region’s quality of life
No competitor covered the whole region, so COLAB studied smaller local resources alongside familiar business-listing products like Yelp and Google Maps to match the user experience patterns people already expect from discovery tools.
Project Approach
As a new entity with no historical data to test assumptions against, the platform had to flex as needs emerged. COLAB built the site with reusable componentry and design patterns, allowing each component to be tested in isolation and simplifying QA on a large, complex site. Flexible content management controls let DiscoverNEPA’s small but growing team combine generic components into custom layouts without developer support. Specific platform features include:
Content Management
Content management with cross-content-type relationships and data sharing between pages and layout components
Things to Do Discovery
Custom Mapbox mapping tool with multi-dimensional filtering and search on the Things To Do and Deals sections
Events Calendar
Event discovery and management with multi-dimensional filtering and search
Nonprofit Explorer
Regional nonprofit finder with filtering and search
Interactive Maps
Interactive explorer map contextualizing the geography of NEPA’s regions (Valley Communities, Endless Mountains, and Poconos Mountains)
Cost of Living Calculator
Custom Cost of Living Calculator powered by API data from The Council for Community and Economic Research
Regional Blog
Blog functionality for articles and stories
Localized Weather
Live, localized weather reporting
After launch, COLAB and DiscoverNEPA continued through an ongoing partnership, iterating on the site continuously: expanding content in engaging ways, learning from analytics, and regularly shipping new features as the platform grew to accommodate thousands of listings and events.
A regional resource that grew the audience it was built to reach
Since its 2018 launch, DiscoverNEPA.com has become the central digital resource for the region. The site saw 138% year-over-year growth in visits within its first two years and now receives tens of thousands of visitors each month, continuing a steady upward trend.
The audience data shows the strategy worked:
With event promotion central to the digital strategy, the Things To Do, Calendar, and Events sections account for 61% of all site traffic
Nearly a quarter of all traffic comes from the targeted 25-34 age group, with even distribution across the 25-64 range, confirming the brand appeals to multiple generations
75% of traffic comes from key target states, and roughly a quarter from the large urban metros NEPA wants to recruit from: Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, DC
The COLAB team has been a huge help as we navigate this. Really can’t say enough good things.
Rebecca Milton Creative Director
DiscoverNEPA set out to give a 10-county region a single digital front door, and the platform delivered. More than 3,500 local businesses, 1,000+ nonprofits, and 5,000+ events now live on the site, and each NEPA region is represented.
Throughout the partnership, DiscoverNEPA maintained its community commitment through business promotion and raising awareness of local causes. The resulting tourism growth became a meaningful part of the NEPA economy, supported local businesses, and raised positive awareness of the region as a place to relocate.
The platform scaled with the organization for years, proof that a clear strategy and flexible foundation can carry a brand from launch through sustained growth.
