Talk Business UK is a well-connected community driven networking organisation owned and managed by Jonathan Smith.  Talk Business UK has established a great reputation locally creating environments that puts businesspeople, community leaders, politicians and Charities in touch and in so doing facilitates the creation of new business ventures, opportunities for growth and supports social cohesion across the counties of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.

Talk Business UK have created targeted forums supporting different business sectors such as property,  not for profit and local business and now in collaboration with Visit Coventry and Coventry BID wish to create an awards forum celebrating the creativity, the extensive range of products and excellence associated with the food and drink sector in Coventry and Warwickshire. The drive behind this initiative is also to support the sector after recent difficult times associated with Covid19 and take advantage to promote this sector during the City of Culture 2021 program coming to Coventry and the region.

THE BRIEF

Talk Business wanted a website that could provide the structure around this exciting new venture promoting local suppliers of wonderful food, drink and hospitality.  The website would be the information hub and facilitate sponsorship organisations, suppliers of products and those creating food and drink experiences to join, become involved and contribute to the venture.

LightMedia were awarded the contract to design and develop a new website for Coventry and Warwickshire. They needed a website that would attract sponsors (large and small) and suppliers. The Website needed to be exciting, interesting and engage with the whole community. Also, the new site needed to be able to work across all devices.  

It was important that the new site scored highly in Google searches so needed to be able to accommodate new content and different formats, they needed a site that allowed them to easily update as new Foodie Categories were created so that contestants would in near real time see the awards available to enter.

THE SOLUTION

After discussions with Talk Business and the Coventry and Warwickshire team and as part of our collaborative design process we created a number of design concepts allowing Foodie Awards to select a preferred design approach based on the concepts presented.

LightMedia then created a new website that provides: -

Interesting and engaging content with imagery that instantly grabs the visitor’s attention.

A Social Media Wall importing all Social Media Comments onto the site keeping it interesting and relevant.

An Events Module allowing Talk Business and Coventry and Warwickshire to advertise events throughout the region

A Blog Module allowing discussion about the events and again helping to keep the site high on Google Rankings

An integrated user-friendly Content Management System that allows Talk Business to add, remove, change and move pages, as well as content including text, images and video easily and quickly.

The Outcome

The completed output matches the brief and is straightforward and logical to use. The impressive imagery instantly grabs the visitor and creates real interest in the award categories.  The events module effectively advertises progress and is being used to draw applicants into the various categories. This site was built quickly to coincide with the launch of the awards with no compromise on build quality. Feedback from the public has been very good and work on a Google Ads campaign is now being investigated.

LINK

The site can be viewed at www.foodieawards.co.uk