Web Design for AgricultureConnect.com - help design brand identity!

AgricultureConnect.com

Agriculture Connect is the first true social media site designed specifically for farmers and landowners. This site will change the way farmers and landowners communicate, negotiate contracts and bring visibility to their land and services. The powerpoint attached provides much greater detail.

This site is a hybrid of a social media site (think Facebook) and an online dating site (think Match.com). Users of this site will be farmers and/or landowners who create a profile to serve as their homepage. This homepage should highlight the great things from their land to their services, and essentially be an advertisement to prospective future clients (think facebook). Also, users will be able to connect with other farmers and landowners for a variety of functions including networking, communicating and discussing land contracts. To do this they use a simple search function that gathers the best matches for their requests and allows users to save connections for future contact (think online dating search function).

The Target audience is males which make up 86% of all farmers. The average age of a farmer is 57, but the layout should be for a younger demographic as this generation is slowly replacing the older farmers. We suspect that many younger farmers will be helping and assisting older generations with this as well.

In short, we are looking for a site that is SIMPLE, intuitive and appeals to the target audience. Since this is an older demographic, there is a barrier to entry if this is complex at all. Think - can a 57 year old farmer easily navigate this site?

The winner of this contest will have the potential to design multiple other pages. We will need roughly 8-10 total pages when all is complete.

Agricultureconnect.com (domain reserved; not active)

In total, we want two pages designed for this specific contest (listed below). The most important thing is getting the navigation bar and overall format correct which could lead to future business.

1) Profile Page - this is the farmer's or land owner's profile or homepage. This should highlight the user, provide pictures of their equipment and/or land, and allow them to highlight all the great things about them. We are imagining something comparable to an online dating (think Match.com) profile page. We have included some rough mockups as well as samples from other sites in the powerpoint. The biggest challenge is that we will have three types of users with slightly different profile metrics. These users are farmers, land owners, and users who both own land and are farmers.

I have mocked this up based on sample sites, but this is completely flexible. We would love a designer who can make this more creative and intuitive by applying your experience.

2) Search Page - this is where the user can search for other users through multiple filters. We are imagining the basic search function with the ability to drill down further through an advanced search. At the basic search level the user selects if they are a "famer" or "land owner," what they are looking for either a "farmer" or "landowner," how far of a mile radius they want to search and then their zip code. We are still finalizing what metrics will be included in the advanced or additional search function, but included some initial thoughts in the powerpoint.

Again, this based off of our sample sites, but encourage creativity to make this better!

(Note)There are multiple other pages that could be added after the contest is over. If we really like a design and direction we are willing to pay additional money offline to have these pages designed. There could be up to 10 pages.

Anything overly complex. Simple is the key here!

Included is the logo with two color options as well as a powerpoint that walks through the vision of the site, key customers and multiple page samples and inspiration.