Wattle designed and built a digital hub website to promote the Soil Association's Agroecology-TRANSECT initiative advocating for sustainable agriculture practices.
Wattle created an accessible and engaging website, leveraging the Umbraco CMS, to provide information about the initiatives mission to promote sustainable agricultural practices, upcoming events, partner organisations, news, and resources.
See the Website
Carlo Schiano Lo Moriello, Project Manager, Soil Association.
"Our main goal is to promote the transition to an agroecological way of managing farming and soil. Given the importance of this, we needed a website to explain our work. Wattle was our natural choice, especially as we've collaborated with them successfully on other projects."
"As the agricultural landscape shifts, our commitment to championing sustainable methods becomes even more paramount. The website is more than just a digital interface. It's a hub of knowledge in promoting agroecological practices. Rose Martin, our Wattle Project Manager, was responsive and supportive and, in tandem with Katie Molloy, Wattle's Head of Delivery, ensured that the website development process remained robust throughout."
Sustainable Solutions for Agriculture
For over 75 years, the Soil Association have been a leading advocate for sustainable farming and preserving the natural world. Recognising the crucial links between food, farming, and forestry, they have actively paved the way for more sustainable choices. Carlo Schiano Lo Moriello is a Project Manager for the Soil Association and he supports the charity on European projects, mainly Agroecology-TRANSECT. Carlos worked with Wattle on the new website build.
"As the agricultural landscape shifts, our commitment to championing sustainable methods becomes even more paramount," advised Carlo.
Agroecology-TRANSECT Background
Agroecology-TRANSECT is an EU funded initiative designed to enhance the understanding of a broad spectrum of agroecological farming methods and promote their adoption by European farmers. The Soil Association co-leads the initiative, alongside 18 other partner organisations from 13 countries. Their main goal is to promote the transition to agroecology to manage farming.
The website is one of the initiative's key requirements. Since Wattle was already collaborating with the Soil Association on other website build projects, including Cool Food Pro and Innovative Farmers, they were the natural choice to create the initiatives new digital hub. The hub would require a thoughtful design and development to bring the vision to life.
Carlo commented, "The website is more than just a digital interface. It's a hub of knowledge in promoting agroecological practices."
Creating an Impactful Digital Hub
The Soil Association needed to promote the multi-year initiative and provide information about upcoming events, deliverables, and other partner organisation involved.
Bringing their wealth of experience in website design and development, Wattle were tasked with building an innovative digital hub for the Agroecology-TRANSECT initiative. The Wattle team led discovery workshops, and an iterative design process, to build the website leveraging the Umbraco CMS. The goal was to develop an accessible and user-friendly hub to promote the initiative's mission of sustainable agriculture.
Through collaborative workshops, the combined Wattle and charity team defined the goals and requirements to create a user-friendly website to educate visitors about the initiative, promote events and resources, and empower farmers to adopt more sustainable practices. Wattle created wireframes and design templates that allowed for an iterative design and development process.
Building Strong Foundations
Rose Martin, Wattle's Project Manager took the lead on the website build. The strong partnership ethos between Wattle and the Soil Association allowed the teams to moved forward swiftly and successfully.
"Rose was responsive and supportive and, in tandem with Katie Molloy, Wattle's Head of Delivery, ensured that the website development process remained robust throughout," recalls Carlo.
The website launched with crucial features like showcasing project partners, listing upcoming events, presenting news and materials, and enabling contact - providing the ideal foundation to share the sustainability mission.
Looking Ahead
The website launched in March 2023 and, from September 2023, the Agroecology-TRANSECT initiative team began to build out and populate hundreds of new events and project results. The website is proving a highly effective way to raise the initiatives profile and highlight all the hard work delivered by the combined teams.
"Working with the Soil Association on the Agroecology-TRANSECT website has been a rewarding experience. Their passion for driving change in the agriculture industry is inspiring. Our team loved the opportunity to build a platform that will educate farmers and advocate for more sustainable practices. We look forward to seeing the website continue to grow and evolve along with this meaningful initiative," advised Rose Martin, Wattle's Project Manager.
Rose and the Wattle team look forward to continuing to collaborate with the Soil Association as the Agroecology-TRANSECT initiative gains momentum. Exciting plans are in the works for 2024 and beyond, including new content, enhanced features, and showcasing project results. Wattle remains committed to supporting the Soil Association's mission of promoting sustainable agriculture through an impactful and engaging website.
