UN Environment

Empowering people for the planet

A woman, facing away from the camera, carries her baby on her back.
A woman, facing away from the camera, carries her baby on her back.

United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) is the leading environmental authority that sets the global agenda for environmentally sustainable policies and practices. Threespot and UN Environment partnered to develop a new digital strategy and design and to assist in the design and development of an updated, connected, and easily manageable website that would help the UN Environment better engage its globally diverse audience across multiple regions, and languages.

Deep Discovery

Threespot conducted extensive research in an initial discovery phase to get a deep understanding of UN Environment’s brand, audiences, business objectives, and technology. We synthesized our findings, benchmarked their current levels of engagement and documented our work in a comprehensive report. We also presented a new vision to consolidate a majority of all of their many websites into a unified web experience to engage audiences more effectively.

Screenshots of plans from the discovery phase.

Goalof Deep Discovery

Support action to protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all by 2030 through 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

A Unified Web Platform

To realize the strategic vision that would contribute to the UN Environment communicating as “One,” we developed an audience-centered information architecture and a unified web platform that integrated multiple web properties into a seamless experience. To meet the full range of their content needs, we created a flexible and robust design system that allowed them to tell better stories, promote key resources and events, and highlight various campaigns.

A screenshot of the web platform on a web browser. A screenshot of the web platform on a mobile device.

Resultsof Deep Discovery

1,200,000 web users

Web users increased by 45% to 1.2M people in the first 6 months after launch. Pageviews on the site grew by 57%, visits by 18%, and pageviews per session by 17%.

Using stories to connect and broaden audiences

At the heart of UN Environment’s mission is to connect and activate people in their vital role to create a sustainable planet now and for future generations. We helped UN Environment shift its content delivery to an “interactive first” mindset to tell its story succinctly across more audiences, creating an audience-centered experience that met a diverse set of content needs. With UN Environment’s research and data focus in mind, we developed opportunities across the site to highlight key data points, and interesting facts to help inform, inspire, and motivate audiences to take action. This included the addition of The Environment and You page designed to engage visitors with sustainability on a personal level and provide pathways to taking action on behalf of the environment.

Screenshots of how the site uses stories to connect audiences.

Resultsof Message Campaign

Over 30,000 pageviews

The Environment and You page was the 9th most viewed page on the site in just 6 months after launch. 1 out of 6 people who saw the page went directly to the Get Involved page to learn how they could take action.

Driving advocacy and involvement

UN Environment fully believes that protecting the planet is everyone’s responsibility. We supported that belief by integrating the organization’s advocacy in a dedicated section on the new site. We focused on building out opportunities for users to take direct action by creating a repository where users can learn more about issues and threats to the environment and immediately get involved with the UN Environment’s full range of causes and campaigns.

Screenshot of a campaign to protect the planet.

Resultsof Message Campaign

Over 50,000 pageviews

The Get Involved page was the 5th most viewed page on the site in the 6 months after launch. 12% of the page visitors clicked into specific UN Environment action campaigns including the Clean Seas, Wilf for Life and Breathe Life 2030 initiatives.

Services

  • Brand strategy & architecture
  • Content & editorial strategy
  • Enterprise digital strategy
  • Online & offline campaign development
  • Organizational change mgmt.
  • Social media strategy & training
  • Workflow & staffing consultation
  • Information architecture
  • Content development
  • User interface design
  • Data visualization & infographics
  • CMS consultation
  • CMS integration & development
  • Application design & development
  • Mobile websites & applications
  • Software consultation
  • Web development
  • Quality assurance
  • Usability testing
  • Search engine optimization

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