July 20, 2009—Visitors to the World Bank’s website used to have to scan more than 20 sites and hundreds of pages to get a complete picture of the Bank’s role in climate change. That all changed with the launch of a new climate change beta website—a harbinger of things to come for www.worldbank.org.
The new website consolidates the best of the Bank’s climate change content in a fresher, more data-rich and interactive format that pilots a new online look and approach to sharing results and knowledge, aligned with audience needs.
Climate change was chosen for the beta, given the urgency of the issue and the need for the Bank to be transparent about its work. The beta also provides a platform for sharing critical knowledge about innovative approaches and solutions, such as those being piloted under the Clean Technology Fund.
“This new website provides a coordinated, single entry point for finding out everything the Bank Group is doing in an area considered to be the most serious global challenge to date. From there, the visitor can get with a few logical clicks to specific regions, countries, and projects,” says Hartwig Schafer, Director of Strategy and Operations for the Sustainable Development Network.
Beta a Working Model to Test Ideas
The new climate change site allows users to visualize various data sets in three different ways (motion chart, timeline and world map), allowing for segmentation by region and date. The latest news, features, reports, projects, most-popular content, and blog posts flow in automatically, while the people behind the Bank’s work on climate change are featured front and center in a special People area.
The changes are part of an evolving approach to communicating the World Bank’s knowledge, services and results in an increasingly digital world.
“The goal for our new web is a vastly improved way of sharing our knowledge and communicating who we are and what we do,” says Web Program Lead Nicole Frost. “And another clear goal is to double our developing country reach, not only to our website, but with mobile devices. That’s where the world is going, and we need to be there.”
The World Bank expects to begin rolling out its new web in the second half of 2010.
“We’re also looking to tap the web’s potential to enable feedback and promote discussion, as well as making it easier for the public to use and share Bank information across the Internet,” says Managing Editor Angela Gentile.
“This underscores that the people we serve and partner with are actively helping us build ideas and generate the knowledge needed to address the challenges of development.”
The beta is an important tool for the World Bank gather feedback as we finalize an approach that we can apply throughout the Bank's entire website. Please be sure to check out the beta and submit your feedback!
