Homegrown Frederick

The original Homegrown Frederick website was outdated and difficult to maintain. It wasn’t responsive and the content wasn’t focused on the local community that Homegrown Frederick serves. OED needed a site that would better explain their goals and mission, and make their information easily accessible and understandable for the agricultural business community, and the general Frederick County population.

Working in collaboration with OED, Orases created a well-organized site structure and a consistent, easy-to-use navigation menu system. This new information architecture allows users to get to any content within 3 clicks and fulfills the needs of Homegrown Frederick users. By using a predetermined and well-tested template, Orases was able to save OED money. This predetermined template and website modules created a great return on investment for the organization and made web training on the site easy since the OED staff already knew how the system worked from previous projects with Orases.

The new site is much more organized and the content can easily be updated thanks to the new Content Management System (CMS). With the site’s Google Maps integration, visitors can search for and get information about local farms, farmers markets, wineries, breweries, and restaurants that use local ingredients. The responsive site also has an events section, so community members can stay up to date on local events.

The new Homegrown Frederick site has proven successful for OED, agricultural businesses, and the community. Local farmers and restaurants get more customer referrals from the site than ever before, and visitors to the site can find information on Frederick’s agriculture faster and easier. The site has even brought in more agricultural business to Frederick County, including more wineries, breweries, and distilleries, which have increased visitors and tax revenue in the area.