A hemp industry start-up called Industrial Hemp Exchange wanted me to design a responsive website based on their business model. The goal of the website was two-fold: to create an online forum for B2B networking among hemp industry businesses, and to drive the sale of membership access to this forum.

The functionality they wanted for the site included:

1) Different membership levels that determined access to the discussion board and posts by other members
2) The opportunity to purchase web banner ad space on the site
3) The means to change memberships and profile information
4)Ability to contact other members privately
5) Ability to view all forum posts by posting time and to respond to them on the forum
6)Ability to view the profile information of post authors to review their professional credentials
7)A free trial membership promotion
8) Home page that promotes different levels of membership to online industry community.
9) Clear communication of business incentives for the visitor user to purchase memberships.
10) Way of gaining visitor trust since this business model is somewhat unique in concept and trust is necessary to motivate purchases.
11) Way to market this online community as a form of industry activism that benefits target visitor audience.

I met these client needs with the following design elements:

+ Using hero to address interests of target B2B visitors: Companies selling product, those buying, and those looking to grow their network.

+ The menu plainly features wording that represents these goals as well to field traffic efficiently for the visitor.

+ Featured mission statement just below to clarify the intentions of this business to gain customer trust, featuring industry activism as their primary motive.

+ Further scrolling reveals more details about services offered and how these will benefit this target audience of business owners.

+ Then I put a section that looks similar to the community forum, featuring the product and service categories the forum offers postings on. This gives the visitor an opportunity to recognize the familiar design pattern of a community forum to gain trust, the opportunity to recognize forum categories that represent their business interests, and a call to action button leading to the membership purchase page.

+ The Sponsor advertisement section just below demonstrates opportunity for purchasing advertising on the website intended for the industry audience that the site is geared for. 

+ Then just below the contact form encourages businesses to reach out with any interests or questions not addressed yet on the home page, to ensure no business collaboration opportunities with other hemp businesses visiting the site are lost.

+ The footer features site menus, disclaimers and policy information to follow standard ecommerce site location of these things.

+ A partner page which pushes the level of membership that comes with access to advertising on the site. Wording encourages these sales as collaborative business activity that contributes to industry solidarity, a primary concern right now for hemp industry professionals.

+ Blog content featuring legal advances and other industry news content that appeals to the interests of those in the industry dependent upon legal changes to increase their sales.

A hemp industry start-up called Industrial Hemp Exchange wanted me to design a responsive website based on their business model. The goal of the website was two-fold: to create an online forum for B2B networking among hemp industry businesses, and to drive the sale of membership access to this forum.

The end result was a visually appealing website which included:

+ 12 webpage mockup designs
+ Front end coding using HTML and CSS
+ design that inspired scrolling and drove sales leads
+ highlighting forum categories and member statistics in place of showing forum content
+ a visual strategy to make the forum look simple, easy, and fun to use