Business Goals:
The Wei Wai Kum First Nation wanted a modern and easy-to-navigate website that would be user-friendly for people of all ages and technical abilities while being responsive for mobile devices. The band wanted to clearly communicate to their 700+ members, as well as the general public, government, industry and corporate partners.
They also wanted to be able to provide comprehensive information on Wei Wai Kai are and what economic developments they have underway, including a private documents section for the member’s site, that would be separate from the public-facing section of the website.
The Situation:
The current site was slow, difficult to use, without clear categories for the information pertaining to relevant members, public and stakeholders. It also lacked a sense of dynamic interaction and community that Wei Wai Kum was focused on achieving. There was nowhere to celebrate the community events, programs and other activities available to members and non-members, to showcase photos of these community occasions or any way to easily disseminate the information out.
What We Did:
We aimed to provide each audience with something specific to their needs and to keep the respective navigation and interfaces as simple as possible. The two sections were built into the same domain, with the member’s section behaving like a different website with its own navigation and content.
When members received their username and password for the site, upon registering, they received access to the members-only section of the site, which includes the private documents on band minutes, meetings, agendas, activities and more.
We also created an automated newsletter for members, to go out each week, and feature the latest news, events and job posts to the website. By automating this system, the Nation can better offer timely communications to members and build a sense of community online via their website.
Tools & Techniques
- A private facing site with unique login access per member, automated through WordPress
- Customized Private Document functionality to build and manage a comprehensive reporting structure within the site
- Automated newsletter system enabled members to subscribe to the newsletter to receive a weekly digest via email and designed in Campaign Monitor.
Learnings/Feedback
“Our nation has a new website and one of the features we’re excited about is that it allows us to automatically generate a weekly e-newsletter. The new website has been designed to help both Band members and non-members find information as easily as possible. The site also works on a range of mobile devices – a function missing from our old site. It is our hope that the e-newsletter and other new website features will allow us to communicate better with Band members and other friends and partners.”
– Stephanie Slater, former Communications Coordinator, Wei Wai Kum First Nations