El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce officials make improvements to website

EL DORADO, Ar. (KNOE) - The City of El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce has updated its website. Chamber CEO Bill Luther said the old one was outdated and needed improvements. They have linked to the City of El Dorado’s site and have fixed issues when searching.

“The bottom picture is the new website, which is a whole lot easier and friendlier to use,“ said Luther. ”You can see, the top one (the old website) was broken. People would try to search on it, and it would come back with an error.”

Other improvements that the city is looking into are improvements in the ability for online payments. Mayor Paul Chote said he wants to help residents save money, especially with the price of stamps increasing to $.60 per stamp in July of last year.

The city is wanting to improve the way residents and potential business clients interact with the site. Luther says there have been 37% of the visitors to the site so far this year compared to the first quarter of last year.

City leaders say that they are trying to attract new business to the area. “In 2022, there were – we can talk about this now – the majority of our time was spent on two projects. One of those projects, as of last month, we are one of the finalists in three states. We’re competing with Mississippi and competing with Texas,” said Luther. “This is a major, global forest products company. It will have a $300 million investment, 150-200 full-time jobs with an average wage of $24 an hour.”

They have been working with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, bringing more business to the area. There has been a surge of restaurants that have been wanting to come to the area, but some restaurants in the area, including Mulekick at the MAD, closed due to a lack of staffing.

The site hopes to improve how businesses view the city and attract larger corporations to come to El Dorado and Union County.