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FortWhyte Alive

Connecting humans with nature through unforgettable shared experiences

Supported by an in-depth content strategy, a nature center finds a way to communicate its beauty, majesty, and complexity through its website redesign. From its 660-acre reclaimed urban green space, FortWhyte Alive brings people together to share unforgettable experiences and build sustainable relationships with nature and each other. Offering varied activities, educational programming, and special events, the nonprofit organization welcomes over 125,000 visitors annually.

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FortWhyte logo imagery
FortWhyte desktop and mobile screen mockup of home screen

The Ask

As a busy and growing organization serving many audiences, FortWhyte Alive was searching for a content strategy that would improve its online visitor experience. Over the years, the WordPress website evolved into hundreds of pages of information that were difficult to navigate. The organization wanted to make its content easy to find and more accessible to those with visual and other impairments. An additional website design goal was to replicate the journey of discovery FortWhyte Alive visitors have when in person when visiting the organization online.

FortWhyte branding screenshot
FortWhyte branding screenshot
FortWhyte branding screenshot
FortWhyte website screenshot
FortWhyte website screenshot

The Solution

This project was completed by team members at Manoverboard, who are now part of Mangrove. An in-depth discovery process involving leadership consultations and visitor focus groups helped establish a content strategy that would inform a complete reorganization and design of the website. We pared down the current site’s content, reshaping it into digestible and skimmable copy that engages, excites and educates. Now, from whatever page visitors are viewing, they can quickly get to another page with ease. We also enabled those visiting FortWhyte online to explore programming organically — presenting related activities that might be of interest to guide their discovery. We built the site to comply with Level A of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines to improve accessibility.

Using a customized WordPress platform, we integrated several third-party tools to enable an events calendar, member management, and donations. We either built these tools directly into the site or styled them to look and feel like they are part of the site, giving visitors a seamless experience.

Highlight

Our work designing the FortWhyte Alive website received an Awwwards Honorable Mention indicating that the site achieved high scores from its industry-led jury and community users. Awwwards recognizes the talent and effort of the best web designers, developers and agencies in the world.

Fort Whyte iphone mockups
Throughout the process of redesigning our website, we were incredibly pleased with the professionalism, attention to detail and eye for design that Andrew’s team brought to the table. Our needs are quite complex, and recreating our web presence was a challenging endeavor, with a need to highlight diverse program offerings and appeal to different audiences. The team was able to skillfully distill our requirements into an attractive and easy-to-navigate site that will serve our needs for many years to come.
Ian BarnettVice President, FortWhyte
Vice President

Roots:

  • WordPress

Our Role:

  • Responsive Front-End Development
  • Custom Wordpress Development
  • Graphic Design
  • Content Strategy
  • Strategic Direction

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