The Maryland Wineries Association is a non-profit trade organization representing Maryland’s commercial wineries and founded with a mission of developing and expanding the grape and wine industry in Maryland through education and promotion. The previous website was built on a proprietary platform that made editing difficult, both for association staff and for its members. The site also utilized a design that was not readily accessible to visitors using mobile devices. This was a particular problem as wineries are destination businesses and visitors who are traveling to events could not quickly access directions, events, and other information.
A primary goal of the project was to provide the Maryland Wineries Association with an attractive mobile-responsive website with a more user-friendly administrative interface. Additionally, the new website needed to utilize open-source coding in order to be more extensible and readily accommodate future changes. The site also needed provide multiple levels of access to site administrators, winery administrators, wine enthusiasts.
DatAchieve Digital provided the Maryland Wineries Association with full content management and administrative levels for member wineries and wine enthusiasts, an interactive wine trail map that can be searched and filtered by categories and features, and an itinerary builder that enables visitors to learn about destinations, add them to their travel list, and automatically connect with Google maps for GPS driving directions—all wrapped in a great new mobile-responsive design.
In addition to the interactive map and wine trails, the Maryland Wineries Association site includes membership resources, forums, and member pages where wineries can share products, events, and information with the public.