Maximizing environmental compliance and sustainability.
NCASI
National Council for Air and Stream Improvement
NCASI is a scientific research association organized to serve the forest products industry and maximize their environmental compliance and sustainability goals. A partnership with NCASI allowed their breadth of content to be more accessible and clearly communicate their industry impact and membership value.
Challenge
Content needed to be migrated from Ektron to a new WordPress CMS and be restructured for an optimal end-user experience.
Solution
Information architecture, reassembled taxonomies, and improved in-site search – users could navigate intuitively and find the resources they need in context.
Results
A website that fulfills the promise of NCASI’s gravitas as a globally recognized preferred provider in the field of environmental science.
Discovery
Discovery Phases
Discovery during this project was not just first in sequence, but importance as well. With this phase, WDG developed a working rapport with NCASI’s team and established transparent lines of communication conducive to a fruitful creative collaboration. Our teams were able to freely exchange ideas in ways that furthered both the project goals and our business partnership.
A bevy of dense, research-centric content needed to be both migrated from Ektron to a new WordPress CMS and restructured for an optimal end-user experience. With strategically pointed IA, reassembled taxonomies, and improved in-site search, their new site was mapped so users could navigate intuitively and find the resources they need in context. The finished deliverable is a website that fulfills the promise of NCASI’s gravitas as a globally recognized preferred provider in the field of environmental science.
Evaluate current content structure and data integrity
Provide a content migration plan from Ektron to WordPress CMS and create working migration test scripts
Identify integration levels with NCASI membership database (AMS)
Provide an integration plan
Provide a final level of effort and execution plan
A Clearer Path
It’s not just about where you’re going — it’s how you get there. WDG wanted to ensure that NCASI’s users could easily find the detailed resources that NCASI.org provides. For ease-of-wayfinding, their content was indexed for in-site search. As for content governance, four focus areas were leveraged as pillars — Research, Training, Insights, Membership — to deftly manage their offerings.
Designed to Last
The Evergreen Value of Membership
Many research organization websites do not make it clear what they do on their homepage. Establishing that NCASI is a vital scientific resource for eco-sustainability issues was paramount — through streamlined user experience, NCASI’s story and purpose now resonate on the screen. To relay the value of NCASI membership was of equal importance during the site rebuild. The message of cost-effectively meeting sustainability needs had to be clearly communicated to current and prospective members, from forest product companies to testing labs and engineering/consulting firms.
WDG needed to put what’s at stake for eco-sustainability — Earth itself — front and center on NCASI.org. Rendered in perfectly pixelated, crystal clarity — the images throughout the site of nature’s untouched elements pull into focus the necessity and urgency of NCASI’s mission. The visual assets a visceral reminder from WDG’s Design Team that the research NCASI does is in fact world-saving.
