ABOUT

Background:
Forests clean our air, protect biodiversity, and provide the products that make daily life possible. Yet 15,000 square miles of forest are lost every year.
Impatient with government inaction, FSC created a market-based solution to fight deforestation. Today FSC is the world’s leading certification system for responsible forest management. Its “check tree” label—found on millions of products worldwide—is recognized by 54% of consumers as a symbol of sustainable forestry.
The FSC system depends on a complex value chain of forest managers, product manufacturers, and retailers that follow strict sustainability standards from forest floor to retail shelf. But FSC’s front door—FSC’s website—did a poor job recruiting new organizations to the cause.
The site was cold and complex. Language and imagery were bureaucratic and drab. Maze-like navigation reflected FSC’s internal organization rather than user preferences. B2B audiences left the site knowing little more about FSC than they did going in—which kept them from seeking FSC certification.
Our remit was clear: Turn a complex, technical site with low user rankings into an inspirational, educational, motivational destination. Success would be measured by increased engagement: Rather than immediately bouncing, could we get more people spend more time engaging with more content?
Idea:
During our discovery process, we realized that all the site’s issues had one root cause: inside-out design.
It wasn’t just the navigation that reflected FSC’s internal complexities. Content, tone, and the entire structure reflected an “insider” orientation. It was a site for scientists, specialists and policy wonks—not for organizations looking for ways to operate more sustainably and attract eco-minded consumers.
We created a simple “from-to” matrix that guided every facet of our work:
- From FSC-out to user-in
- From technical to motivational
- From fragmented to flowing
- From operations to recruitment
- From standards enforcement to inspirational leadership
With our strategy in place, we didn’t have to look far for our big idea.
Our “ah-ha” came from the source: the forest. Our goal was to make FSC’s website as inspirational, useful, and seamlessly interconnected as the forest itself.
Forests naturally do many of the things we needed FSC’s website to do. They are extraordinarily complex but simple to enjoy. They offer both beauty and utility. They provide different kinds of value to different kinds of visitors—novices and experts, environmentalists and entrepreneurs, casual drop-ins and long-standing devotees.
With the forest as our guide, we began a complete site overhaul that reimagined every facet of the experience: information architecture and navigation, content and utility, imagery and tone, user journeys and calls to action.
Making FSC’s website as inspirational, useful, and interconnected as the forest came to life in many different ways:
- Aesthetic experience: We replaced a coldly formal and dense design with a rich, open visual approach that invites users to take a breath and explore. Dark backgrounds accentuate key visuals while also saving energy, so the site is both beautiful and more sustainable.
- Navigation: An elegant “megamenu” structure lets many different kinds of users—from different industries, different parts of the value chain, needing different certification types—quickly find information specific to their interests. The megamenu combined with smart lateral linking lets users easily chart their own pathway through the site.
- Content: We replaced technical, jargon-filled pages with content written to an interested but nonexpert audience. What was coldly instructional content is now inspirational, educational, and motivational.