Oceans North

Uniting Science, Storytelling, and Design for Greater Reach

Oceans North partnered with Yeeboo Digital to redesign their WordPress website, creating a modern, accessible platform that clearly aligns their research and advocacy work under three key priorities: climate, communities, and ocean. The result is a flexible and mission-driven site that empowers both users and internal teams.

Oceans North works to protect the ocean in partnership with Indigenous and coastal communities across the Arctic and Atlantic regions of Canada and beyond. Grounded in science and Indigenous knowledge, they take action to support marine conservation and climate leadership.

With growing public interest in ocean protection and climate solutions, Oceans North recognized the need to clarify their purpose online and deliver a more compelling and accessible user experience. Their website needed to communicate their values and work more clearly, while supporting growth in storytelling, content, and digital engagement.

Partnering with Yeeboo Digital, they launched a full redesign and rebuild of their WordPress website. The project focused on creating an intuitive structure, strong content strategy, and modern design that better serves users, search engines, and internal teams.

The Challenge

To better reflect their purpose and support future growth, Oceans North needed a website that was clearer, easier to manage, and more aligned with their mission.

  • Unclear Content Structure: The previous site lacked a clear framework to communicate Oceans North’s core priorities, making it harder for users to understand how their work is organized or why it matters.
  • Disjointed User Experience: Navigation paths were inconsistent and unintuitive, creating friction for users trying to explore key research, news, and program content.
  • Disconnected Content and Calls to Action: The previous site lacked a clear connection between content and engagement opportunities, making it difficult for users to take the next step. Whether reading a related article, signing up for emails, or making a donation, there was no natural flow from information to action.
  • Limited Flexibility and Accessibility: The site did not fully meet accessibility best practices and was not optimized for managing bilingual content, limiting its inclusivity and long-term maintainability.
  • Outdated Visual Design: The design lacked the visual impact and credibility needed to match the quality of the organization’s work and brand evolution.
  • Hard-to-Manage Backend: The existing WordPress backend had become overly complex due to years of patchwork changes, making it difficult to update content without confusion or errors.

These challenges revealed the need for a structured, flexible, and purpose-driven redesign to support Oceans North’s mission more effectively.

The Solution:

To meet Oceans North’s needs, we delivered a fully custom WordPress website using a modern flexible content blocks framework with scalable architecture and strong strategic alignment.

  • Collaborative Discovery and Strategy: We led a multi-session discovery process to clarify goals, audiences, and content structure. This included content strategy workshops, user journey mapping, and a new site architecture built around Oceans North’s three main focus areas—climate, communities, and ocean.
  • Purpose-Driven Design: Our design team created a fresh, on-brand look and feel that balances science with storytelling via imagery, video or copy. The layout emphasizes visual clarity, bold headlines, and immersive photography, all aligned to the organization’s values and tone.
  • Flexible, Modular Content Blocks: We built a reusable library of custom content blocks, allowing content authors to easily create and manage diverse layouts without compromising design consistency or accessibility.
  • Bilingual Functionality and Accessibility: The new site is built to be fully bilingual in the future and adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA standards. It provides a seamless, inclusive experience for users across all devices.
  • Optimized Backend and Staff Empowerment: We streamlined the backend interface, making it intuitive and easy for internal teams to manage pages, media, and content types with confidence. Training and custom documentation ensured a smooth handoff.

Together, these efforts created a digital platform that not only tells Oceans North’s story more clearly yet also helps their team tell it better.

The Results

The redesigned Oceans North website provides a stronger foundation for digital storytelling, organizational clarity, and long-term growth.

  • Improved Clarity and Focus: Users can now clearly explore content by priority area, with intuitive pathways that make it easy to learn, act, or engage with current work.
  • Stronger Visual Identity: The new design aligns with Oceans North’s brand values and mission, helping establish trust and credibility with funders, partners, and the public.
  • Stronger Connection Between Content and Engagement: The new site design places calls to action strategically alongside relevant content, creating a natural flow that guides users to explore further, sign up for updates, or support the mission through donations. This improved structure helps turn interest into meaningful action.
  • Inclusive, Accessible Experience: The site delivers a consistent, high-quality experience across languages and devices, ensuring more people can access and engage with the content.
  • Efficient Content Management: The modular block system and simplified backend give internal teams the tools they need to manage updates quickly and with minimal support.

Conclusion

This project reflects how Yeeboo Digital supports mission-driven organizations in building digital experiences that amplify their voice, strengthen their purpose, and move people to act. For Oceans North, that meant creating a website that not only reflects the depth of their work but also invites visitors to explore, learn, and get involved in protecting ocean ecosystems and supporting climate leadership.

By combining strategic structure, accessible design, and flexible content management, we helped Oceans North create a platform that is clear, inclusive, and ready to grow alongside their mission.

This collaboration embodies our shared belief in using digital tools to drive meaningful change and connect people to the issues that matter most.

About Yeeboo Digital

Yeeboo Digital is a progressive, full-service digital agency dedicated to the nonprofit and charitable sector.

We empower organizations across North America and beyond to turn digital potential into real revenue through smart nonprofit digital strategy, deep expertise in fundraising technology, and tailored solutions. With a focus on impact, we help charities and nonprofits do more good, reach more people, and drive their mission forward.

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