Alberta Council of Environmental Education (ACEE) is a non-profit organization established as an information network between environmental educators across Alberta. ACEE was created to provide a wide variety of resources & workshops to advance environmental education.
Our Audience
The target audiences of ACEE are three levels of government, corporations and industry associations, funders, schools, non-government organizations, and citizens of all ages.
Our Mission
Our goal with the redesign of ACEE’s website was to incorporate all necessary messages using a Content Management System (CMS). Our reasoning for this was to grant ACEE full access and rights to uploading content and media, managing social media efforts, and email newsletters. Their website was to be a pseudo virtual office in providing current information to all internal and external users.
Measurable milestones to support this project goals:
- Create a new website architecture using a CMS.
- Enhance means of providing resources to internal and external users.
- Integrate social networking tools.
- Improve search engine placement
- Increase awareness of upcoming events
RTI leveraged their skills with PHP, HMTL, CSS and Javascript allowing for all elements of this website to be searchable, book-marked and accessible across internet browsers. A thorough set of wireframes were created to show ACEE the general layout and navigation of the future website. Analyzing the websites available space allowed for mockups to be generated to explore the design and layout of elements to come. Content was then completed and uploaded to the website in conjunction with applying the approved website template. Our final item to address was validation and testing by pouring over the functionality of this website in a multitude of browser versions to ensure consistency and standard compliance.
Design
With local organizations, professionals, donors, schools and resources being the core user-base of ACEE, we decided on a design encompassing the best of all worlds. Visuals were inspired by natural settings, school groups and environmental efforts. RTI aimed to create a professional looking and working website centered around intuitive usability.
Interactivity
ACEE had seen the power of social media and was determined to incorporate such elements as a core of their web-presence. The other big development for ACEE their blog. This section allowed for tone driven ideas and conversations to take place which are heavily promoted through social networks.
Keep in touch
The users of any website are always best retained with ample reasons for them to keep in touch. RTI took a few steps to keep ACEE’s users coming back for more. First, conversations are established through the blog. Second, these conversations are promoted through social networks issuing users a chance to share and discuss these posts amongst themselves and with ACEE. Third, we created a newsletter sign-up for those users interested in less frequent update yet want to stay “in the loop”. Finally, upcoming events are consistently displayed throughout each page of the website to broadly expose events to come.
The Result
RTI was ready to launch this website in December of 2010 which was a crucial element in promoting events and resources immediately. ACEE’s social media efforts made diffusing information to users more time and cost effective. Overall this website is much easier to find via search engines for an array of keywords both organically and strategically generated. RTI has seen consistent growth in ACEE’s user-base and will continue optimizing this website for continued expansion.
Services Provided
- Website Strategy
- Communications Planning
- Website Development & Consultation
- SEO & Analytics
- Social Media Setup & Consultation
- Website Management, Training, and Consultation
- Website Hosting
- Social Media Workshops (2010 & 2011)
Continued Work
The website was the first phase of this multi-leveled contract. Presently, RTI is developing a highly interactive resource centre allowing users to upload and view media. Social population of this information will shift much of the workload from ACEE’s plate to willing contributors.
Click here to see the Alberta Council of Environmental Education website.