Our work
This is Climate Action
Building a modern, intuitive website leveraging a modern headless CMS
Challenge
The WA Government were looking to raise awareness about the actions that individuals, communities and businesses can take to address climate challenges. They wanted to keep the WA community updated on Climate Action projects, initiatives, and grants designed to help the transition to a climate-resilient, low carbon state.
Insight
There was an opportunity to bring together the topline view of WA’s climate action in a dynamic and impactful way, with simple and consistent wording, signposting users to lead Government agency websites if they wanted to explore more in-depth.
Solution
Hatchd worked with WA Government to create a flexible solution for our client. We collaborated closely to build a modular, accessible website with engaging visuals and functionality on important projects and actions.
Empowering WA to Take Climate Action
The WA Government in collaboration with other key government agencies including the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER), wanted to raise awareness of the steps individuals, communities, and businesses can take to address climate challenges.
Hatchd were briefed to ideate, design and build a website. The vision was to empower the WA community with the knowledge and tools needed to make a difference. The project also aimed to keep everyone informed and up to date on Climate Action projects, initiatives, and available grants—all part of the steps being taken to transition to a climate-resilient, low carbon state. By showcasing the positive changes already happening, the site aimed to encourage more people, communities and businesses to get involved, take action, and be part of a sustainable future for WA.
Design and Architect
We created a moodboard of web pages with preferred design directions and a desired look and feel. They had to be consumable, engaging and within a concise format that is easily accessible and understandable by a broad range of members of the WA community. We defined imagery, colours and branding elements to start creating the building blocks of the modular design within the Sanity CMS.
Identify and Prototype
Hatchd held a workshop with the WA Government team to define the Information Architecture (IA). The outcome identified key user touchpoints, functionality and site hierarchy. Each page needed to have a specific purpose and vision for how they would engage with the general public, notably:
- What is climate change and how does it affect me?
- What government climate action is being taken?
- How can I take action?
Delivery
Built on the latest and greatest tech, our development team chose a modern tool set consisting of a Next.js (React) front-end and a headless CMS powered by Sanity.
Sanity is like a database with superpowers, which allows WA Government to create content tailored to their exact use case, with a modern editor experience. This enables WA Government to have virtually unlimited flexibility in terms of content and how it is tailored to authors and end users. Our Hatchd X-CMS can create unique page layouts and tell engaging stories using a selection of pre-defined modules, which means that there are no bloated or overwhelming editing experiences.
The website uses Sanity’s real-time preview functionality so that the WA Government team can see visual changes alongside their content while editing. This setup gave the development team the flexibility to architect the content models to suit the needs of the WA Government specifically and avoided anything looking too cookie-cutter.
Hatchd X-CMS allows the WA Government team to have enough functionality to hit the ground running, combined with future growth flexibility. We agreed on which visual aids and content devices would be needed to display the content, custom modules could be developed so that the WA Government team can easily build out dynamic pages themselves.
Test and Launch
Our test team wrote test cases for the website and planned out the approach. We went through a period of QA testing, accessibility checks and user acceptance testing. Tests were conducted across different browsers and devices. We utilised triage sessions with WA Government to prioritise bug fixes required and ensure critical bugs were resolved and retested.
Once testing was completed, WA Government conducted a final review of the website and provided approval for a production build. Climate Action was launched live to the public in September 2023.
Ongoing support
Post-launch, the WA Government team saw the opportunity to add potential features to the site. We reviewed campaign results along with the website analytics to help inform what new features would be valuable to users. We identified a rapid validation process which would allow us to gain insights before completing scoping and build, seeking up to 50 people online, within WA (no specific locations, regions or age groups) to answer a range of questions relating to the Climate Action website. We utilised two platforms, Maze and Askable, to gather users to complete the survey.
The user insights helped to inform the features and changes which were implemented for the second release of Climate Action in April 2024. We continue to provide day-to-day ongoing support to the team and look forward to seeing how the Climate Action website expands into the future.
