How we helped an informational/educational food institute restructure and redesign their website.

Client

Arrell Food Institute

Scope

User Experience
Web Design
Web Development

Overview

The Arrell Institute, at the University of Guelph, strives to bring people together to conduct research, train new generations, and shape social, industrial and governmental food decisions.

We were approached by Arrell to design and develop a new website that would restructure their digital content so it would be easier for users to access and search for.

The Problem

Content that had outgrown its website.

With a website designed for a smaller content based site, Arrell ran into an issue when their content grew.

Encountering problems like running out of sections to organize new content, inability to direct users to new content, and losing users in a maze of pages without a clear path was affecting them negatively and leading to high bounce rates.

The Challenge

Directing users to the content they need to see.

Arrell provides content to inform the public on making thoughtful decisions related to food. To make sure users see the information that they are meant to see, we were challenged with structuring the website so the Arrell team would be able to direct these users to the content intended for them.

The content not only needed to be accessible, but also maintainable, so five years from now its structure will be just as effective as it now.

Strategy and Goal

Outline, analyze, reorganize, and restructure.

Our plan was to outline all of the existing content so we could pinpoint the current issues that were holding back the site.

We analyzed what pages were receiving the most hits and why. We reorganized everything that made sense to the Arrell team and its audience. Lastly, we restructured the site based on the first three steps to achieve an accessible and maintainable site.

User Experience

Easy and seamless user journeys and navigation.

All the pages were structured and designed to make the user’s experience simple and easy to understand. The goal was to have users show up to the website and find exactly what they’re looking for with as few clicks as possible.

Visual Design

Warm and inviting.

The overall aesthetic was inspired by farms and the sunrise to create a bright, positive and fresh feel.

The design elements throughout the site were designed in a way that can be reused and realigned to accommodate any new features or unexpected projects applied to the site.

Development

Custom templates to maintain consistency.

Based on the design elements created for the site, we developed easy to follow templates containing all elements to use for any future projects and pages that will be created by the Arrell team.