Kawartha Conservation website earns highest honours at 2020 International WebAwards

September 16, 2020 – Kawartha Conservation’s website, which launched in April of this year, has been recognized as the Best Environmental Website, finishing with the highest score in the Environmental Website category of the WebAwards.

The WebAwards are an international competition that honours excellence in websites for organizations, companies and government.

“This recognition is a testament to the incredible time, effort and work our staff put in to ensure we are developing and delivering the best possible site to our watershed residents, visitors and municipalities,” said Kawartha Conservation CAO Mark Majchrowski. “Our website redesign project started more than a year ago and involved every staff member across each department in fulfilling our vision and goal of connecting with multiple audiences and communities.”

Waterloo-based eSolutions Group, worked with an internal team at Kawartha Conservation to shepherd the project from an idea to a concept and design.

“eSolutionsGroup would like to congratulate Kawartha Conservation for their success in building an award-winning online identity that is innovative, creative and purposeful,” said Karen Mayfield, Global Practice Director - Digital Citizen Experience and President of eSolutionsGroup.

“The new website, built to meet and exceed web accessibility standards and with design that’s responsive on any device, was developed by an extremely involved and detail-oriented Kawartha Conservation team,” Ms. Mayfield continued. “Staff thoughtfully and enthusiastically engaged in training and stakeholder exercises, identifying both human and environmental capacity needs when determining the web presence’s information architecture and its look and feel. A major highlight is the new permit application process, which has been transitioned online using accessible digital forms helping streamline and simplify regulation of development.”

“It was a pleasure to work with the dedicated and hard-working team and we recognize that the organization’s continued flexibility, creativity and focus on the user experience has culminated in a digital platform that will continue to support programs, services and the organization’s invaluable stewardship of the Kawartha watershed,” Ms. Mayfield concluded.

Each year the Web Marketing Association names the Best Environmental web site as part of the annual WebAward Competition. Since 1997, the WebAwards are recognized as the premier industry based Website Award program in the world.

Best Environmental websites are selected by judges who review the entered websites using seven criteria:

• Design
• Ease of use
• Copywriting
• Interactivity
• Use of technology
• Innovation
• Content

“This award is a reflection of the work, effort and commitment across our organization, as well as the support of the Board of Directors, ensuring the successful completion and launch of our website in April,” said Mr. Majchrowski. “Our collective hard work has paid off and we have a site we can all be proud of, and our web visitors can benefit from, today and long into the future.”