CEEJH: Using a custom website platform to support growing research and events

Overview

CEEJH was becoming an independent organization and had outgrown Squarespace right as a hard deadline arrived: the Environmental Justice and Health Disparities Symposium. The old site couldn’t handle event registration, couldn’t support the new Climate Justice Fellows program, and wasn’t built for an audience that had grown to include community partners, researchers, and policymakers all at once.

Black Digital replaced Squarespace with a custom WordPress platform and integrated symposium registration directly into the main site rather than bolting on a separate tool, which kept the event tied to the organization’s broader digital presence instead of living as a disconnected microsite. The team also built a searchable directory for the Climate Justice Fellows program, designed content categorization for the site’s distinct audiences, and delivered training and documentation so CEEJH’s team could run the platform going forward. A research and advocacy organization needs a site that keeps pace with the audiences it’s trying to reach, not a site frozen at launch, and that’s what CEEJH now has: a foundation for its next phase rather than a redesign of its last one.

In its first year live, the new site backed that up. The symposium page anchored by the new registration system became the platform’s top performer, proof the integration worked exactly as intended, and 68% of new users arrived direct, a strong signal of return visitors and word-of-mouth rather than one-off traffic.

Results

• 48,372 total page views and 25,417 new users in the site’s first year live (2025)
• The symposium page drew 17,892 views and 11,713 active users, the platform’s top-performing page
• The homepage followed with 12,816 views and 10,046 active users
• The new Climate Justice Fellows directory drew 1,992 views and 1,199 active users in its first year
• 68% of new users came in direct, with organic search (12%) and paid social (12%) rounding out acquisition

CEEJH now has a platform that’s carrying real weight: a symposium registration flow that’s become the site’s busiest page, a growing fellows program with its own discoverable home, and traffic patterns that show people coming back rather than landing once and leaving. For Black Digital, it’s confirmation that building for what an organization becomes next, not just what it needs at launch, pays off once real audiences start using the site.

Related Services

• Website Design and Development
• Member Portals and Digital Tools