WWF need little introduction, they’ve been campaigning and fundraising to protect endangered wildlife for over 50 years. They are the world’s leading independent conservation organisation.
Increasingly, their work is about tackling environmental challenges and climate change. Whilst working at Neo, I designed the UK’s digital platform for their flagship ‘Earth Hour’ event – the world’s largest grassroots movement for the environment.
Earth Hour encourages people around the globe to sign up to switch off their lights and devices for one hour, in order to celebrate their commitment to caring for the future of the planet.
Their existing digital platform already had a sign-up mechanic, but their metrics highlighted that conversion rate was not as strong as might be hoped. The original form required multiple actions before you could input your details. We created a simpler user journey through the sign-up process and placed it as a content block, above the fold on all device screens.
Completing the sign-up form immediately placed a pin on the map below, creating dynamic platform for sharing content and stories. We used mapbox integration, in order to customise both the visual appearance of the map and the clustering of pins. This enabled the user to navigate the map at a variety of different views – giving an overview of the number of sign-ups when zoomed-out and the ability to click on individual sign-up stories when zoomed-in. Using mapbox not only enabled us to strip out extraneous details from map layers, making it easier to read; but gave us the opportunity to create a customised map in WWF’s brand colour palette.
Working within the budget required a pragmatic approach to problem-solving. Built on a WordPress platform, we could not create unique page templates for all of their immediate and foreseen content requirements. Repurposing page templates would have given the site a formulaic and repetitive feel, especially as new content is added regularly throughout the year.
We decided instead to design and build a modular range of editable ‘content blocks’ that can be stacked in any combination, to create unique page designs. These included single and four-part promos, one and two column text and image/video fields, custom html containers, latest tweets and social sharing modules and a multi-format lightbox for previewing and downloading campaign assets. This combination, along with spacer and line break blocks, provides them with a kit of parts that caters for all of the different types of content they need to display.
Each of these blocks is editable, within a set of fixed parameters, such as colour and type styles. This allows the team at WWF to create new page designs, without compromising the integrity of their brand.
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