Changing the Way America Eats and Farms
In their mission to transform the way America eats and farms, Stone Barns Center hosts and runs education programs for beginning farmers, convenes change makers for talks and conferences, and continually develops innovative agroecological farming practices on the farm. Our goal with a new web experience was to help establish Stone Barns Center as a leader in the agroecology space to the world beyond the New York region.
A New Digital Identity
In our partnership with Stone Barns Center, we designed a new digital identity, created a new user experience accounting for the unique audience segments, and replatformed the website on WordPress to allow the Stone Barns Center team to easily update and expand the website. In order to streamline internal processes and improve data around visitors and donors of Stone Barns Center, we built a custom integration between WordPress and their CRM system.
Mobile First
The original Stone Barns Center website was not mobile friendly, therefore it was a priority that the new site was mobile first, to offer a consistent brand experience on all devices. We optimized the mobile user experience by exposing the navigation links, ensuring that the diverse audience segments could access relevant content at any point on the site. Post-launch we tracked the analytics performance and engagement on mobile and made monthly improvements to streamline the mobile experience.
A Modular Approach
With Stone Barns Center’s ever-growing needs as an organization, new initiatives and events held at the farm, we took a modular approach to the site design. In WordPress, Stone Barns Center is able to create pages and change the order of content based on their current needs, so that the site would scale and be flexible with their company.
Guiding Donations & Memberships
As part of partnership with Stone Barns Center, we worked together to optimize the site based on KPIs, growing additional content areas on the website with the goal of furthering education, increasing donations, and supporting the team on ongoing marketing initiatives. Using the modular template, we designed a ‘Support’ page that highlights their various initiatives in education, experimentation and farming, ultimately encouraging the audience to support the farm by becoming a member or donating. In our first post-launch sprint, we developed a ‘Membership Matrix’ to highlight the benefits of Membership in a more comparative way.
Ongoing Optimization and Maintenance
Following the launch of the new website, we’ve been tracking the site’s performance with tools like Google Analytics and HotJar. On an ongoing basis, we provide recommendations to improve engagement and user experience on the site. As part of our ongoing partnership, we’ve also created a number of email templates to advertise events, promote campaigns, and highlight thought leadership articles.
