Orange County Website Redesign

The Orange County website was in need of a new look, one that was both aesthetically pleasing and easily navigable by community members, business owners and visitors. Orange County North Carolina wanted the new website to accurately reflect its standing as a progressive and “green” county, attractive to new businesses and residents, and rich with diversity and history as represented by its towns and its people. Orange County also needed a site that would address a broad range of citizen needs and concerns while appealing equally to the wide demographic spectrum of its residents. Additionally, the County wanted the website to be different from the layouts and elements typically seen on other government sites. Not only that, but the site would need to satisfy a host of technical requirements to ensure extensive browser compliance and accommodate 17,000 pages of content!

We launched the project with a brand discovery session to define the unique attributes and characteristics of Orange County. Working with government officials who comprised the Orange County web committee, we were able to capture the essence of Orange County’s municipal personality and formulate a complementary creative approach to the website. Kelly MarCom also completed an analysis of other government websites and reviewed the sites that the committee indicated they liked best to create a brand profile for Orange County’s site. The resulting website design was aesthetically driven and featured imagery unique to specific locations all across the county, providing balanced representation of the many towns and communities within the county’s jurisdiction. To satisfy the technical requirements, we left intact the existing site architecture, but realigned the content to provide a better, more intuitive user experience.