Environmental Investigation Agency

The challenge

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) investigate and campaign against environmental crime and abuse, producing hard-hitting reports to push for new legislation, improved governance and more effective enforcement. They needed a highly secure, engaging site that strongly pushed their message, while also giving them a professional platform to build vital relationships with enforcement agencies, lawmakers and local activists.

The brief

EIA are pioneers in the field of long-term undercover investigations. Their new site needed to really bring this across, showcasing their cutting-edge reports and building support for their campaigning efforts. The project also presented an opportunity for in-depth user research and refined SEO, to make sure that EIA could reach as many individual and institutional users as possible.

Our approach

We began by carrying out UX research as a standalone project. This was to give EIA time to reflect and integrate user feedback, as well as plan the final budget for the website refresh. We ran a series of in-person and virtual card sorting exercises with EIA’s internal stakeholders and users, before validating the findings through a survey. We compiled the data into a full report, with suggestions on the site’s information architecture and answers to key questions such as users’ priorities in visiting the site, what content could enrich the new site, and what they liked and didn’t like about environmental campaigning sites as a whole – and EIA’s in particular.

Our solution

Working from our initial UX research, we designed and built a site that brings across the organisation’s tenacity and resulting successes. Where EIA’s old site had liberally used their brand blue, we focused more on their black, making the site stronger and bolder. EIA don’t tone down their reports and neither should the site.

We used texture throughout the design, breaking up solid black lines to give the feel that EIA’s undercover reporters are out there in the field. This is complemented by the low-res, looping video on their homepage, which is largely shot on mobile phone and highlights both the urgency of their work and its covert nature. On key landing pages such as Climate Change, though, the videos are slower and calmer: encouraging users to pause, take a breath and engage with the content.

We implemented logical, consistent taxonomies for EIA’s crucial resource listings and gave sitewide SEO consultancy to help promote their content effectively. We used data collected on the old site’s search performance, in-depth keyword analysis and a rigorous content creation and reviewing process to help the new site compete effectively for some of the most highly contested search terms out there.

EIA now has a distinctive, professional site that reaches the right users and is highly scalable, with future developments planned for their multimedia content, maps and campaign tools.

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