Ceres

Many small and medium-sized businesses are in the early stages of their sustainability journeys and often lack the resources or specialist support available to larger corporations. Ceres aimed to bridge this gap by making expert sustainability guidance more accessible to these smaller entities.

The objective was to develop Ceres Roadmap 360°, a free, self-guided tool that allows companies to assess their current sustainability practices. Based on this assessment, the tool generates a customised report, including a scorecard, best-practice recommendations, and resources for further improvement. The goal was to create a user-friendly, efficient platform that prioritises action over assessment—avoiding the complexity and time-intensive nature of traditional sustainability tools.

Simultaneously, Ceres was planning a wider website redesign and refresh. A critical requirement was ensuring that their complex Salesforce integrations and donation tools remained fully functional throughout the transition. This led Ceres to issue a dual Request for Proposal (RFP) covering both the Roadmap 360° tool and the total Ceres website redesign.

The initial brief for the Roadmap 360° tool described a complex, multi-layered process. To address this, Brew Digital held a series of Decision Sprints with the Ceres team to unpack the core requirements. These sessions were vital in clarifying the tool's primary goal: providing a self-assessment framework that offers tailored, actionable recommendations for companies.

A significant part of this process involved translating the core logic from a complex Excel-based framework into an intuitive web application. Once the logic was mapped, we moved directly into wireframing to visualise the user interface and overall experience.

The front-end design was kept intentionally simple, presenting one question at a time. We integrated context-sensitive definitions and examples to guide users through each module toward their tailored response. Our goal was to strike a perfect balance between simplicity and the depth of reflection required for a meaningful sustainability assessment.

The launch of Ceres Roadmap 360° successfully marked the completion of our brief, meeting the high expectations of the Ceres team. Our Decision Sprints effectively defined the project scope, allowing Brew Digital to deliver a functional, user-centric tool that is set to have a meaningful impact on sustainable business practices worldwide. The use of TDD ensured a robust, reliable product that required minimal late-stage intervention.

Working with Brew Digital was a dynamic and rewarding experience. From our first meeting, it was clear that Brew had a passion for supporting our vision. They demonstrated a clear understanding of what we wanted to achieve, and their previous experience with similar projects was a significant differentiator for us.

Throughout the project, Brew Digital's understanding of user experience was invaluable. They helped us design a workflow that was straightforward and easy to use, despite the complexity of the tool. They provided constant ideas and recommendations, and their expertise and dedication to understanding our vision led to the creation of a tool that is both user-friendly and effective in improving sustainability performance.”

– LJ Deluca, senior manager, Ceres Company Network, Ceres Roadmap 360° project lead

Parallel to the development of the Ceres Roadmap 360° tool, we partnered with the organisation to rebuild their primary website. The existing platform was running on an outdated version of Drupal, which had become difficult for the marketing team to manage and posed significant security risks.

Ceres required a migration to a modern, secure environment that offered greater ease of use without compromising their vast library of institutional knowledge. A critical technical requirement was ensuring that their complex Salesforce integrations and donation tools remained fully functional, preserving the primary engine for their fundraising and data management.

Working closely with key stakeholders at Ceres, we conducted a Decision Sprint to rapidly identify the website’s functional requirements and define an ideal structure. This collaborative approach allowed us to audit the existing site content, leading to a significant reduction in information bloat and a more streamlined user journey.

Following the sprint, our design team collaborated with Ceres to create a visual identity that could accommodate a variety of specialist tools while maintaining a clean, professional aesthetic. We selected Statamic as the new CMS for its speed, security, and intuitive editing interface.

To safeguard the organisation's extensive legacy, all assets from the legacy site were migrated to a secure S3 bucket. This strategic move ensured that every historical PDF and report remained accessible via straightforward redirects on the revamped site, preserving years of critical institutional research.

The new Ceres website is a high-performance platform for global advocacy. We implemented a sophisticated caching architecture, including "Full Measure" caching, where the CMS generates pre-rendered HTML versions of pages. This eliminates the need for the server to process PHP on every request, instead serving raw HTML. Combined with Cloudflare integration, this has made the site incredibly fast and resilient to high traffic.

In the first quarter following the launch, the impact was immediate:

• 40% decrease in bounce rate compared to the legacy site.

• 25% increase in conversion rates across key engagement and donation tools.

• Improved Server Resilience: The move to a modern environment has significantly increased security and uptime.