Atomised: the Web Design Co-operative

The Project

The project was to design and build a new website with content management for the premier broccoli grower in the U.K - East of Scotland Growers Ltd. East of Scotland Growers Ltd (ESG), have their headquarters in Cupar, Fife but as an agricultural co-operative are made up of member farms from the Scottish Borders in the south of Scotland to Angus in the north. A recent venture has seen ESG begin to grow broccoli in Morocco allowing them to supply broccoli to their customers (the supermarkets) nearly all year round. In addition to broccoli, ESG also grow cauliflower, onions & swedes and are at the forefront of the growth in organic vegetables.

Atomised were especially delighted to be working for a fellow co-operative business and one based in Fife. A big part of being a co-operative business is that co-operatives seek to do business with each other first where at all possible. So as a web design co-operative we were putting that into action.

Our client wanted a site that reflected the unique qualities of their produce. In meetings, words like ?fresh? were often used and the importance of the people and places where this Broccoli is grown were repeatedly emphasised. So that's what we did: we sought to design a site that would visually reflect the freshness and unique qualities of the produce, where it comes from and who grows it with a huge emphasis on dramatic photographs & colour schemes. In union with this approach though we have implemented the site using the latest web standards. The site validates as 100% compliant XHTML Strict 1.0 & CSS 2.1 as well as the highest rated AAA Accessibility under the WCAG 1.0 accessibility guidelines. The site sections highlight the company, the individual growers, the crops & location of the farms including the inclusion of customised google maps showing the farm locations.

We built a bespoke content management system to give ESG maximum control over their site including the addition of new news items, the ability to add and remove crops and growers including images and to add or remove farm location pins on the google maps. Search engine optimisation was also a key requirement.