Overview
Interactive Knowledge was hired by the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool (CROPP) based in La Farge, Wisconsin to design and build a new, online system for delivering milk quality data, scientific research, updated events and news. The redesigned website exceeded their goals, and provided over 2,000 organic farmers, who are members of the coop, access to their milk quality data on mobile phones and tablets for the first time.
About this project
CROPP, which owns and distributes its products under the well-known Organic Valley brand, came to us wanting a new, updated website that would greatly assist their 2,000 farmers. Through audience identification early in the discovery phase, it was determined an overwhelming majority of visitors to farmers.coop used mobile or tablet devices. The design and information architecture was formed to optimize the experience on these devices. The homepage and navigation appeal to two key sets of site visitors - current cooperative members as well as those interested in joining.
The IK approach
The new site expands access to each farm’s milk quality data based on farmer and staff requests. We improved the milk quality data lifecycle and front-end presentation by integrating a new API into the existing farmers.coop website. This improved integration replaces the existing file-based source of record (which requires file transfer and storage) in order to display quality and pickup data on the website.
In addition, we integrated a new online tool for farmers to reach out to interested members, offering jobs, internships or even farms for sale. We built a website for high school students that promotes CROPP’s goals and introduces organic farming as a sustainable lifestyle choice.
Cooperative members are provided an extensive resource library powered by an Apache Solr faceted search. Through careful content strategy and taxonomy development users can easily find desired content using well defined, clear categories and tags.
The Farmers.org website is an online recruitment tool that describes the process that Organic Valley uses to help standard farms convert to organic. The site also serves as a password-protected portal for members to access a wealth of research articles and content specific to their needs including full access to their milk quality reports online for the first time.
The Results
The new site has been extremely well received by coop members. We continue to work with the IT department and the Farmers Communication Team to plan, prototype, test and implement improvements to the online delivery of milk pick up and quality reports.