An organization with mission-driven goals and programming requires a comprehensive digital ecosystem that represents how its mission comes to life. This means looking at all aspects of the organization’s work and using strategic messaging elements that work in concert with one another.
For Merck Forest & Farmland, it was critical to offer their digital visitors an experience reminiscent of visiting the land in person. This meant creating an organic path of discovery that embodied the paired values of preserving wild places and managed land stewardship.
"Working with LONDONmiddlebury felt less like hiring an outside agency and more like adding three expertly skilled colleagues to our team, minus the HR paperwork. :-) Ashley, Matt, and Kelly are the best. They are thoughtful, responsive, strategic, and easy to collaborate with. From start to finish, during our organization's digital refresh, we were in good hands. They helped us manage a complex project with a lot of moving parts and turned it into something clear, beautiful, and deeply aligned with our mission. Communication was top-notch, copywriting sharp and on-brand, and their ability to translate big-picture goals into thoughtful details made all the difference.”
—Renata Aylward, Communications Manager at Merck Forest & Farmland Center
A digital experience reminiscent of the organization’s mission
Merck Forest & Farmland Center (MFFC) is a nonprofit organization based in Rupert, Vermont. It’s a place where sustainable stewardship and hands-on learning come together to create eye-opening experiences for visitors of all ages that are rooted in sustainable stewardship and the conservation of natural systems. The property itself serves as one of the only uninterrupted forest passages for migratory species in the Northeast, making its preservation mission critical.
The organization needed a powerful, dynamic website to house all of its elements, from cabin bookings to event sign-ups to a virtual story map of Merck Forest’s global ecological significance built in ArcGIS. Most importantly, the website needed to perform as a digital ecosystem representing all the environmental initiatives that shape the organization as well as the people who bring them to life.
Merck Forest & Farmland Center turned to LONDONmiddlebury to build a website to serve the needs of the organization’s staff and stakeholders while offering clear and engaging site navigation for site visitors. Beyond the functional website build, LONDONmiddlebury wanted to provide MFFC with a brand new digital experience that excites and educates visitors while capturing the beauty and ecological necessity of the land.
Authentic storytelling through a Wix website
We started by meeting with members of the Merck Forest team to understand the scope of the website and its capabilities. It was important to us to hear from all stakeholders so as to develop integrated solutions that worked for each branch of the organization. Early in the project, LONDONmiddlebury Partners, Matt and Ashley, visited Merck Forest during their Harvest Festival to get a first-hand experience of the lay of the land while exploring all the organization had to offer.
We decided that Wix was the perfect platform to house the organization’s website because it has the ability to integrate all the services required, including bookings, events, orders, and donations. In addition to these valuable functionalities, Wix allowed us to create a website design that tells an engaging story, showcasing photos and videos from the farm and forest alongside ArcGIS story map integrations to foster a greater appreciation for MFFC’s global impact.
As we designed this website, we made sure authentic storytelling would serve as the throughline to convey the deep significance of the property: one of the few unbroken forest blocks in the Northern Appalachian-Acadian Ecoregion alongside a state-of-the-art sustainable farming operation. Merck Forest & Farmland Center has a long history and a critical role in our ecological future, so it was our job to ensure that this message came across.
Impact: enhanced user experience from start to finish
Merck Forest & Farmland Center’s redesigned website achieved three objectives:
- The website clearly shows the purpose of the organization, capturing MFFC’s personality, voice, and value proposition.
- The website has a simple, effective, and engaging navigation that encourages exploration and deeper understanding.
- The organization’s staff can easily make necessary updates to events, bookings, and more in the backend of the website, largely due to Wix’s intuitive platform design.
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When we presented the website to the MFFC team, we conducted an in-person training to teach them how to use Wix’s suite of web tools. We also supplied a personalized, comprehensive how-to guide for making edits to the website moving forward.
The new Merck Forest & Farmland Center website is its own balanced ecosystem with an enhanced user experience for the organization’s team, supporters, and visitors. The site successfully unifies multiple initiatives under one cohesive platform, eliminating previous silos, streamlining workflows, and underscoring the Center’s mission to inspire curiosity and foster responsibility for natural and working lands.