Delicious on your doorstep

At the heart of the website, we needed to have a directory that would showcase all the members, as well as giving us ‘premium’ and ‘freemium’ options if Wiltshire Council ever wanted to go down that route. This directory was going to be invaluable to both the public and businesses – it would let our members showcase their businesses, and it would help the public discover new places to go and things to eat. However, it would also then help businesses, whether members or not, to find new suppliers.

To do this as seamlessly as possible, we used our own CMS, EngineRoom, which we’ve developed over the past decade. We love WordPress, but EngineRoom is even more flexible. It’s able to cope with complex databases and even more importantly, it’s plugin-free, because we control all the functionality – something that’s absolutely necessary when we’re dealing with local authorities and a set of governance questions longer than your arm.

The story we told

The directory was only one part of the site though – we wanted it to be so much more.This needed to be a hub for tourists, residences and businesses alike, where they could find out the latest food and drink news, what events were happening near them, and where all these great members can be found.

With the great flexibility EngineRoom gives us, we built in a blog, an events section, and an interactive map that pulled all of these elements together. If you click on a member’s pin on our map, you can see the latest two pieces about them – snazzy, right? There’s also a comprehensive search function, so if you’re looking for info about the best Sunday roast, for example, you can find a list of members, blogs or events that all mention Sunday roasts. Couldn’t be easier!

We also needed to make it simple for people to sign up to join, while following the guidelines that Wiltshire Council set in place. We introduced pop-up forms that, once submitted, sent all the key info about the Wiltshire Marque straight to a prospective member’s inbox. Combine that with some snappy iconography, and there’s loads there to inform businesses what they’ll get if they join.

Finally, we brought it all to life with our cracking brand photography and copywriting, giving visitors a true taste of Wiltshire whenever they stopped by.

The Mighty impact

So far, The Wiltshire Marque’s website has been very well received by visitors of all categories. Our interactive elements keep people engaged, and we’ve become the top referrer for several members. And also, it’s one of the top ranking websites for information about Marlborough’s farmers market, which is all you can hope for, really.