Out & Equal
Unifying two sites into one seamless, future-ready experience.
Client Overview
Out & Equal delivers programs, resources, and strategic support that transforms workplace inclusion into a competitive edge. It partners with global companies to ignite their strategy through the spark of inclusion, fueling innovation, attracting top talent and building workplace cultures that forge the future of business.
Out and Equal Mobile Gallery
The challenge
Out & Equal maintained two separate digital properties serving distinct but overlapping purposes. Their primary marketing website communicated their mission and sold services to members — including leaders, corporations, and businesses — looking to build more LGBTQ-inclusive workplaces. A second site, known as The Global Hub, lived at a separate URL and functioned as a member portal. Since the branding for both was different, visitors got a disjointed experience, encountering one experience on the main site, then landing in an entirely different environment once they logged in.
The core challenge was to bring these two properties together into a single, cohesive destination, with the goal of unifying not just the content, but the overall user experience and branding. Doing so would allow Out & Equal to streamline how their content was organized and presented, while eliminating the friction that came with maintaining two separate platforms.
Adding urgency to the effort, shifts in the U.S. political landscape brought significant budget pressures and new constraints on how Out & Equal could operate and communicate publicly. In the lead-up to the redesign, the existing site had become a patchwork of hastily added and removed content as the organization moved quickly to adapt, resulting in a fragmented, inconsistent digital presence. Rather than continuing to react, Out & Equal saw an opportunity to step back, reassess their strategy, and build something that could serve them intentionally and sustainably in an evolving environment.
As Out & Equal was already a support client with Kanopi, we were a natural choice to assist with this strategic rebuild.
The process
Discovery work
Our initial research uncovered issues within four areas: the UX, the design, the content, and technical needs. The summary from that work outlined solutions for each of the four areas, and outlined next steps so the team could be on the same page moving forward.
Content mapping
Taking the findings from the discovery summary and existing content work done by Out & Equal, we reworked the content map to fix the identified readability and accessibility issues. We also made meaningful and unique calls to action to increase conversions.
The solution
To bring Out & Equal’s two digital properties together, Kanopi approached the work in three carefully sequenced phases, allowing the team to manage complexity while keeping momentum.
The first phase focused on launching the redesigned marketing site. Out & Equal came to the project with a largely defined content strategy, which allowed us to move efficiently to build out a site map, polish content mapping, develop mood boards, and translate everything into a full design. The result was a purposeful main site delivered without the need for an extensive content overhaul.
The second phase tackled The Global Hub, which required a deeper technical lift. The team implemented a full Salesforce integration to manage user authentication, paired with MagicLink Pro to make the user registration and sign-on experience as frictionless as possible. Rather than navigating a traditional login flow, members simply enter their email address, the system interfaces with Salesforce in the background, and they’re in — a seamless experience that matches the welcoming, accessible spirit of Out & Equal’s mission.
The third and final phase introduced the Employee Resource Group (ERG) Registry, a directory feature that allows Out & Equal members to create and share information about their workplace resource groups, giving organizations a way to surface what they’re doing to support LGBTQ inclusion. While this component was scoped and designed during the main build, its completion carried into the support phase, representing the last piece of content and functionality to be fully migrated from the original Global Hub site.
The result
The completed build delivered Out & Equal a unified WordPress site that not only consolidates their two previous digital properties, but does so in a way that aligns with the realities of their operating environment; the organization now has a thoughtful, sustainable foundation to work from as the landscape around them continues to shift.
Content editors and users are better equipped to manage and evolve the site on their own terms — an outcome that extends the value of the build well beyond launch day.
Out & Equal also stands as a strong example of what’s possible when a client remains engaged and committed when approaching their website with long-term sustainability in mind. Continued collaboration and iteration can meaningfully build on a strong foundation, turning a successful project into a continuously improving digital experience.
