The Alabama Community College System's Economic Development Division works with businesses across the state — site selection support, workforce pipelines, custom training partnerships across 24 colleges. What they needed was a site that actually reflected the scope of what they do.
ACCS EDD operates at the intersection of economic development and workforce training. When a company is deciding where to locate or expand in Alabama, EDD is in the room — connecting them with the community college closest to their site, the training programs that fit their workforce needs, and the people who can make those programs happen fast.
The old digital presence didn't reflect any of that depth. The goal for this project was a site that led with the data, communicated the breadth of the network, and gave businesses and partners a direct path to the right information.
The Brief
Five priority industry sectors. Twenty-four colleges. Sixty-seven counties. Over 130,000 enrolled students. These are the numbers that make ACCS EDD's pitch to economic developers. The site needed to put them front and center — not buried in a paragraph, but presented with enough visual weight to land.
Beyond the numbers, the site needed to:
- Surface the five industry sector programs with downloadable PDF profiles
- Feature the EDD team and their direct contact information
- Link out to related programs — the Innovation Center, ALFAME, Alabama Training Network, and the Office of Apprenticeship
- Work cleanly on mobile for site selectors and partners accessing it in the field
Structuring the Sector Profiles
The five-sector structure was the central design challenge. Automotive, biotech, forestry, aerospace & aviation, and maritime each have distinct programs, partner colleges, and contacts. They all needed to feel like part of one unified system — not five separate sections fighting for attention.
"Five industries, 24 colleges, one coherent site. The sector card grid gives visitors a fast path to exactly what they need without requiring them to read everything."
The approach was a card grid — one card per sector — with a consistent visual treatment: sector name, a short description, and a link to a downloadable PDF profile. Clean in, clean out. A visitor can scan the five sectors in under ten seconds and click directly into the one relevant to them.
The Hero and Video Background
The hero section uses a looping YouTube video with a custom dark overlay in ACCS's navy and gold. The video pulls from their existing asset library — no new production needed. CTAs drive toward the contact form and the sector profiles below the fold.
Getting the video behavior right required some custom work with the YouTube IFrame API. Autoplay restrictions behave differently across browsers, and the standard YouTube loop parameter doesn't work reliably in embedded contexts. The looping logic needed to be handled manually — detecting when the video ends and restarting it programmatically. The result is a seamless, muted background loop that starts immediately without flash or buffering artifacts.
Putting the Numbers to Work
The stats — 130,000+ students, 67 counties, 24 colleges — appear in a mid-page stats band with enough typographic weight to stop the scroll. For a business looking to understand the reach of the network, those three numbers do more work than three paragraphs could.
The section is simple by design: large numerals, short labels, a consistent layout. It answers the most important question a site selector has — "how much of the state does this actually cover?" — immediately and visually.