Zaytoun
Sharing the story of this award-winning social enterprise
Project overview
Founded in 2004, Zaytoun is a community interest company, which aims to create and develop a UK market for artisanal Palestinian produce. Initially set up selling only olive oil and funded by customers paying in advance, Zaytoun quickly established itself as a UK social enterprise, supporting Palestinian farming communities facing the challenges of illegal Israeli occupation and settlement, through fairly trading their oil. All of their profits are reinvested into this mission.
Today, Zaytoun are as well known for their award-winning Medjoul dates and their range of products continues to grow, supporting the livelihoods of Palestinian farming families. The team contacted us ahead of their 15th anniversary in 2019, to help update their five-year old website, which they felt didn’t tell their story well, and was built using a CMS system that was difficult to manage.
Working together, we created a brand new website that gave much more of a sense of the story of Zaytoun, made it easier for visitors to find what they need, and easier for the team easily manage their seasonal updates in-house.
0.56
C02 per page view ↓
98%
Accessibility score ↑
1.8
Page load time ↓
We’re loving the new website. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
Streamlined design
Working closely with the Zaytoun team, we created a brand new design, keeping within their existing brand guidelines but ensuring that the updated design would be more appealing to their wide audience base, which includes retailers, stockists and consumers ranging from foodie bloggers and instagram influencers to ethically conscious shoppers.
The new design strikes the balance between a focus on the products themselves and the human stories behind them. The initial landing page invites people to view their products, and with the latest news directly underneath, site visitors immediately see the latest in Zaytoun’s story.
Store locator
The previous website had a list of Zaytoun stockists all on one page, with a drop down menu to filter by area. The drop down menu was hard to read and this made it time consuming to find local retailers.
To make the new site more intuitive, we added an interactive map with a store locater function. Visitors to the site can simply enter their postcode, or click one of the pins on the interactive map, and this will take them straight to the details of their nearest local retailer.
Plant a tree certificate
Zaytoun supports an olive tree planting project which is run by the Palestine Fair Trade Association (PFTA). To encourage site visitors to support this project, Zaytoun offer a gift certificate for the purchase of any trees.
With their old website, collecting the details and creating the certificate was a time consuming process. To make this easier for the Zaytoun team and faster for their customers, we created an online form, which generates a certificate that is automatically emailed to the customer when they buy a tree (or bundle of trees).
WordPress CMS training
Zaytoun’s original website was built on a CMS that was very tricky to use, which the team found frustrating. The site layout on the old CMS also did not lend itself to creating new and useful content, and the team were unable to keep it up to date.
By creating the new website using WordPress CMS and providing comprehensive training to the team, the site is much easier for them to manage internally, allowing them to regularly update their news page, and create content for seasonal campaigns.
Huge thanks to the whole team at Wholegrain! We are so impressed by the smooth transition. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you. We’re loving the new website. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
