Since 2015, Florida Cattle Ranchers has been promoting a harmonious mixture of gernerations-old ranching practices, the science of ecology, sustainable economics, and the values of hard work to a modern world. With this in mind, we set out to tell a story of how old-time values and contemporary methods can work together.
Objectives & Challenges
The primary objectives with this design were twofold: organize the content into a logical structure to make it easy to navigate; and, using design and layout, tell a story that marries the science and ecology behind the organization with the personal histories and principles of the members.
The client also had a few integrations and custom requests including adding a Google Calendar and an interactive map highlighting their member ranches.
Their really weren’t many challenges with this project. The client had ample copy and a large selection of high quality photograpy. The biggest challenge ended up being the primary navigation. They had a number of links that got a little messy with smaller desktop browser windows.
Objectives
- Photo-rich web design that tells the story of multi-generational ranches.
- Modern web layout to accomodate mobile devices.
- Clarify navigation and content structure.
- Highlight ecology and ranching sciences.
- Highlight the values and stories of member ranch families.
Project Components & Highlights
for Florida Cattle Ranchers
Navigation
To accommodate a main navigation that had too many primary links, we moved a few of those links to a slightly modified secondary navigation. Instead of implementing a full-width bar above the header, simply took 4 links and broke them out just above the primary nav. This made the navigation clear and kept the main level from breaking on smaller desktop windows.
Home Page Enhancements
We built a few tasteful features into the home page that provides some nice eye-catching movement and interactive attractions.
Fade-In Text on Scroll
As a user scrolls past the header image, informational text and a call-to-action link fades into view over a beautiful pasture and cow scene. This fade encourages the visitor to stay engaged and not just scroll past.
Elegant Video Viewer
Continuing down the page, the visitor comes to a video carousel viewer. This viewer allows the user to either scroll through videos or select a titled tab to automarically load a video to watch.
Interactive Map
Finally, the client wanted a map of Florida that showed where their member ranches were in the state. Instead of using a flat image or an antisceptic Google map, we used whats called an image map with trigger points. When a user clicks on one of the markers for a ranch, a small window pops up with the ranch name, location, and a link to read more about the ranch.
