The Climate & Agriculture Initiative BC (CAI) is an organization invested in making the future of agriculture in BC more sustainable. CAI provides resources and implements targeted programs to help those working in BC’s agricultural sector adapt to the changes stemming from climate change. The organization was created in 2008 and, in the intervening years, outgrew their original website.
Getting CAI up-to-date
When CAI connected with Kobot and Rachel Penner Consulting about revamping their website, they needed us to transform their website into a tool equal to the sizable challenges they face. The organization serves a range of audiences—from farmers to researchers to government groups—and has a robust catalogue of resources on different regions and agricultural issues. How do you hold all the information that people need, without being so overwhelming that no one can find anything?
- The Challenge CAI has an extremely detailed collection of resources, and the new website has to to connect people with the information they need, when they need it. And that information must be delivered in a way that makes sense, instead of hitting the reader with a wall of words.
- The Solution Kobot tackled this by thinking through the client journey from practical standpoints. Then, we created multiple entry points and ways for people to self-identify and find information relevant to their needs.
- The Results The final product provides resources & tools that are accessible, searchable, and easy to find and share. These are all clearly communicated in a practical and vibrant responsive design.
Get where you need to go
People working in agriculture are incredibly busy, and in recent years are coping with many different climate-related issues. CAI’s library of resources is massive, and daunting to look at as a whole. Kobot worked with CAI to strategize multiple different entry points to the content.
We incorporated this right from the moment users land on the homepage with a search bar for resources in the hero block of the site. Then, as users scroll down the page there are large, photographic callouts funnelling them toward issue-focused content, region-specific content, or the full library of tools and resources, as needed.
Break it up
Each Region and Issue page holds an abundance of valuable information. The challenge was making sure that it was digestible for audiences, instead of an impenetrable wall of words. The team worked in-depth with CAI to find a design solution.
A strong type hierarchy, visual elements to differentiate between page sections, and a table of contents with jump links work together to let readers scan easily and find the content they need efficiently.
Empower the administrators
Kobot always creates sites that are easy-to-use for the administrators as well as the front-end users. The organization’s driving purpose is providing up-to-date resources on climate adaptation. We made sure they can fulfill that mandate to the best of their ability by empowering them to make changes to the website whenever they need.
"Our biggest wish for a new website was a way to make our 180+ products accessible, findable and easy to share. We had examples of different sites we liked, but the design that Kobot came up with exceeded our expectations. The library system they developed is engaging, user-friendly and easy for us to update in the backend."
—Climate and Agriculture Initiative BC team
This project demonstrates Kobot’s ability to balance the concerns of both internal and external audiences, while dealing with practical concerns like a substantial resource catalogue. The new CAI website balances a warm, stylish design with practical user experience considerations in a way that will serve the organization well for years to come.