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I love the innovative design and user experience... your feedback is welcome
To say that this is an exciting day for me is a radical understatement. I am officially launching the brand new Local Food Forum website. I hope you will visit today and visit often, and I hope you will find the look as beautiful and the user experience as amazing as I do.
If that sounds braggy, it’s not. While the editorial content is mine, the innovative design is that of Jadon Groves, who built the site for me.
Jadon and I have known each other for several years through other professional pursuits that involve my work with the Naturally Chicago non-profit. But Jadon has created a web design business, Rise Cloud Solutions, that is currently a side gig. If you look at what he’s done with this Local Food Forum site and think he’s kind of a creative genius, so do I.
So, Why a Website?
I am proud of the audience that the Local Food Forum newsletter has built on Substack, and the impact it has had, since I launched this project in April 2021.
Never fear, the newsletter isn’t going away, but I will announce some changes soon aimed at encouraging readers to visit the website. If we get a lot of traffic on the website, we can pitch it to sponsors, with the goal of making Local Food Forum financially self-sustaining.
Along with being a design whiz, Jadon also is much more knowledgeable about search engine optimization and keywords and meta-descriptions, the kind of things that build a website’s visibility on web browsers and generate organic traffic.
One of the major strategic goals for Local Food Forum is to better nationalize the content by attracting more readers from beyond the boundaries of the Chicago region, with the hope that we can secure contributed content from other local food ecosystems and can all learn from each other.
The website will also enable me to publish more content than I already do. Even publishing at the practically daily pace that I do, there is only so much information that I can stuff into the newsletter format before you wonderful readers out there start to lose interest and perhaps patience.
A website, on the other hand, is a bottomless pit with the capacity for me to add more stories on more topics going forward. Readers will be encouraged to visit the web, browse, use the search and categories to find the information that relates to them best, and maybe tell their friends and associates that they should check it out.
Plus, the expanded platform means Local Food Forum will also be more fun! Scroll down on the home page and you’ll find trivia, a word search and a puzzle, all about food of course.
And believe me, my mind wouldn’t have come up with that artwork introducing me… That’s all Jadon. He managed to include Barb (peeking from behind the tree); Hobbes, who is in the tree; and a random cow (perhaps we’ll stage a naming contest). I’m pretty sure other people and animals will pop up there from time to time.
Is the Website a Finished Product?
Not quite, though it’s more than 95 percent. The biggest and most technologically challenging thing left is to program the calendar of Chicago region farmers markets. This will be completed soon, but we’ll also continue to publish the text version of the market schedule that has been a feature of Local Food Forum since it was launched. The schedule for the next week’s markets is below.
Wait, Didn’t You Already Have a Local Food Forum Website?
Yes, I took a stab at this last year, but the design unintentionally contained a major technological glitch that ultimately could not be fixed. This turned out to be a lucky break, because just look at the new site, will you?
Can You Help?
OK, I think the website is one of the best things that’s happened to me in my long professional life, but can we do even better? Your feedback and suggestions are very much welcome (though be nice, I have feelings too). I can’t wait to hear from you.
Get the details about our next webinar — which I am confident you’ll find both informative and inspiring — and register by clicking the button below.
Regional Outdoor Farmers Market Schedule
The surge goes on! We are going from zero Friday markets in the region to four, just like that. More and more opportunities to buy delicious, super-fresh, nutritious and sustainably produced food… and support our local farmers.
* denotes that it is the market’s season opening day.
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