Global Nonprofit Redesign: Simplifying SeaKeepers’ 900-Page Site
Background
The International SeaKeepers Society is a global marine conservation nonprofit that partners with the yachting community to support oceanographic research, education, and environmental stewardship.
Founded more than 25 years ago, SeaKeepers operates from its headquarters in Coral Gables, Florida, with active chapters in the United Kingdom, Singapore and Bangladesh, and the South Pacific, and program partners ranging from universities and aquariums to youth organizations and scientific institutions.
As a mission-driven organization with no physical visitor center, SeaKeepers relies heavily on its website as the central hub for credibility, discovery, and engagement. The site must simultaneously serve five distinct audiences: vessel owners, scientists, educators, volunteers, and donors. And act as the official repository for the organization’s programs, expedition records, educational resources, events, and global impact reporting.
Over the years, SeaKeeper’s website had expanded to nearly 900 published pages, dozens of content types, 27 active forms, and multiple program pathways. While rich in information, this growth left the site difficult to navigate, visually inconsistent, and challenging to maintain. For an organization with worldwide initiatives and fast-moving project outputs, SeaKeepers needed a modern, cohesive digital presence that reflected the scale of its mission while making it easier for supporters and partners to engage.
With plans to elevate its public profile, strengthen fundraising, and streamline how program partners access opportunities, SeaKeepers approached Pronto to redesign its website, creating a world-class platform that showcases its global impact while delivering a cleaner, more intuitive experience for every user.
By the time SeaKeepers approached Pronto, their website had grown into an immense digital ecosystem. With more than 886 published pages, 77 posts, 27 forms, and multiple program categories, the site had become difficult for both users and administrators to navigate. What began as a repository for program documentation had evolved into a sprawling structure that no longer reflected the organization’s stature as a globally recognized leader in marine conservation.
SeaKeepers’ Homepage in 2024
Vessel owners, scientists, educators, volunteers, and donors all rely on the website to begin their relationship with SeaKeepers — whether submitting research applications, downloading lesson plans, finding volunteer opportunities, or donating a vessel.
But with so many pages, inconsistent layouts, and unclear navigation paths, users often struggled to find what they needed.
As Director of Marketing & PR, Ivonne Gamboa noted during discovery, “This is why our website is very confusing…we have five groups of target audiences.”
The previous site used multiple shades of blue, inconsistent page styles, and limited visual hierarchy. Key pages — including program applications, impact content, global chapters, and resource libraries — had become text-heavy and visually disjointed.
SeaKeepers wanted a presence that could stand alongside top-tier environmental organizations, showcasing their global mission with a more modern, immersive, and inspiring visual identity.
With so many content types, from expeditions and citizen science logs to publications, events, and program updates, the team needed a backend that was structured, scalable, and easy to update.
Instead, the legacy system was cumbersome, requiring manual formatting and repetition across hundreds of pages. This created bottlenecks for posting time-sensitive content, such as new expeditions, press coverage, or volunteer opportunities.
Landing pages for crucial programs were missing or buried deep within the site. High-value actions such as applying to a program, donating a vessel, or registering for events often required several clicks to access.
This structure made it harder for SeaKeepers to support fundraising, improve search visibility, and create streamlined user journeys for each audience group.
As a nonprofit with no physical visitor center, SeaKeepers’ website is its primary “front door.” It must communicate global credibility, scientific rigor, and impact to donors, program partners, researchers, media, and the broader public.
Yet the old website didn’t convey the scale of its work, the professionalism of its team, or the true breadth of its global initiatives.
Pronto partnered closely with SeaKeepers’ marketing and leadership teams to rebuild the organization’s website into a global-scale digital platform that is modern, intuitive, and structured for long-term growth. The redesign focused on solving three major challenges: simplifying navigation, elevating brand credibility, and building a backend capable of supporting the nonprofit’s massive content library and multi-audience programs.
The project began with a full audit of the existing 886-page website, followed by collaborative architectural planning with Ivonne and Pronto’s website team. Insights from discovery calls, the request for proposal, and competitor analysis informed every design, content, and development decision.
Content & Navigation
🎯 Goals
- Make SeaKeepers’ five audience pathways (vessel owners, scientists, educators, volunteers, donors) clear and intuitive.
- Consolidate and reorganize content to reduce friction and improve discoverability.
- Streamline CTAs for program applications, volunteer activities, educational resources, and vessel donations.
✅ Achievements
- Complete sitemap restructuring, reducing depth and making key content accessible within one to two clicks from the homepage.
- Consolidated navigation with clear, distinct menu groupings: What We Do, Get Involved, Support, Media, About, turning what used to be a 10-layer experience into a structured, logical flow.
- Created new landing pages for critical user actions:
- Discovery Yacht Application
- Education Request Application
- Research Project Application
- Migrated fragmented program content into clearer sections (e.g., Scientist-Led Expeditions, Citizen Science, Educational Outreach, Community Engagement).
- Built chapter-based navigation for global locations (USA, UK, Singapore/Bangladesh, South Pacific).
- Rewrote and restructured key pages to remove dense text blocks and highlight impact, storytelling, and mission clarity.
Design & Visual Direction
🎯 Goals
- Modernize the visual identity to match top-tier conservation organizations.
- Create a cohesive, ocean-inspired brand theme with strong emotional appeal.
- Support heavy content types (expeditions, events, galleries, publications) with visually consistent layouts.
✅ Achievements
- Developed a refined color system: harmonized SeaKeepers’ multiple blues and introduced a green accent to create a brighter, more distinctive maritime palette.
- Designed flexible, modern templates for chapters, programs, events, and resource libraries — ensuring visual consistency across hundreds of pages.
- Introduced immersive visual elements, including:
- A homepage video banner that establishes mission impact immediately.
- An animated global presence map illustrating chapter reach and worldwide project locations.
- Clean typography and spacious layouts to improve reading and browsing comfort.
- Implemented a design system that can scale with future content growth while maintaining clarity and brand continuity.
Development & Integrations
🎯 Goals
- Organize the site’s enormous content volume into a flexible, maintainable backend.
- Make updates manageable for SeaKeepers’ internal team across global chapters.
- Ensure compatibility with the existing hosting environment and necessary integrations.
✅ Achievements
- Implemented a robust data structure using Custom Post Types (CPTs) and Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) for all major content groups, including:
- Created search and filter tools to help users explore dense content sets such as events, publications, expeditions, and vessels.
- Developed chapter-based templates enabling SeaKeepers to manage each region’s content independently while maintaining brand consistency.
- Integrated Qgiv/Bloomerang donation forms for cash contributions and vessel donations.
- Enhanced the vessel directory and related forms for easier browsing and inquiry submission.
- Structured the backend so the SeaKeepers team can update content efficiently without risking layout breaks — a critical improvement for an organization with continuous program updates.
User Experience (UX)
🎯 Goals
- Create a journey that feels effortless for each of SeaKeepers’ five audience segments.
- Reduce cognitive load and eliminate confusion caused by redundant pages and inconsistent layouts.
- Highlight high-value actions early and often.
✅ Achievements
- Designed clear, audience-aligned pathways for yacht owners, scientists, educators, donors, and volunteers — each with relevant CTAs and simplified process explanations.
- Added sticky CTAs, improved menu visibility, and better landing page flows to boost conversion opportunities.
- Integrated testimonials, global impact stats, press coverage, and program partners throughout the site to establish trust at every step.
- Ensured that all major actions (donate, apply, volunteer, join the program, request educational resources) are easily discoverable and consistent across mobile and desktop.
- Applied a unified UX system across the entire site, giving SeaKeepers a more prestigious, world-class digital presence.
“Our website is the center of everything we do. It’s how vessel owners, scientists, educators, volunteers, and donors first experience SeaKeepers. Pronto understood just how complex that ecosystem is, and they built a platform that finally reflects the scale and heart of our mission. ”
Results
SeaKeepers’ new website officially launched on August 25, 2025, marking a major milestone in the organization’s digital transformation. With its global audience, program complexity, and content volume, the project required a complete architectural overhaul, and the outcome reflects that depth and ambition.
Within the first weeks of launch, the new platform immediately delivered improvements in user clarity, content discoverability, and operational efficiency:
- Significantly improved navigation, allowing key audience groups — vessel owners, researchers, educators, volunteers, and donors — to find relevant pathways in fewer clicks.
- A dramatically cleaner content hierarchy, replacing hundreds of fragmented legacy pages with structured, optimized Custom Post Types (CPTs) for expeditions, events, educational resources, publications, testimonials, and global chapters.
- A modern, world-class visual identity, featuring a video banner, refined color palette, and animated global presence map that strengthens credibility across all continents.
- Stronger conversion readiness, with new landing pages for program applications and donation flows, as well as integrated Qgiv/Bloomerang tools for online giving.
- A backend that is far easier to manage, enabling SeaKeepers’ internal team to update programs, add new expedition logs, publish press features, and maintain chapter-specific content with minimal friction.
Most importantly, the new website finally reflects the scale and sophistication of SeaKeepers’ global mission. The organization can now highlight its research expeditions, youth education programs, citizen science initiatives, and community engagement efforts in a way that is visually compelling, easy to explore, and aligned with modern nonprofit standards.
With its foundation rebuilt, SeaKeepers now has a digital platform capable of supporting future growth in fundraising, global partnerships, and program expansion — positioning the nonprofit to amplify its impact for years to come.
Website Design & Build
Make your business stand out with a unique WordPress website design
MIS Solutions
Bringing the MIS Vision to Life with Pronto's website development services.
