Riding into revitalized UX.

Alberta Equestrian federation

Empowering Alberta’s equine community.

Alberta Equestrian Federation (AEF) has been dedicated to working for equine communities across Alberta since 1978. As the province’s single governing body for the equestrian industry, they offer a range of programs, services and resources for horse owners and riders, from beginners to experts.

AEF’s previous website was not meeting their needs, both in terms of usability for members and ease of management for staff. We developed an effective, scalable, and user-friendly website that enhances the experience for AEF’s members and the broader equine community.

Reach

  • 15,000 members in over 425 Alberta communities.

Services

  • Information Architecture
  • UX & UI Design
  • Content Migration
  • Website Development
  • Web Hosting

Year

  • 2025

Tech Stack

  • WordPress
  • HorseReg
  • Events Calendar Pro
  • Pantheon

Digital Strategy

Strengthening community, membership and growth.

Alberta has the highest number of horses per capita in Canada. The equine industry is vital to the province’s culture and has a significant impact on its economy. AEF’s digital presence needed to better reflect their vision as the “premier source for education, information, and support for the entire horse and equine community”. To accomplish this, we made critical updates to the user experience and rebuilt their website on WordPress.

Our approach built upon AEF’s existing design to create an elevated and member-centric digital experience. We started by rethinking the navigation to intuitively guide their distinct audiences of owners, riders, coaches and officials to find relevant programs, resources and competitions. We also sought to improve key pages and interfaces that were experiencing usability issues. By re-platforming the site from a proprietary CMS to WordPress, we helped to streamline AEF’s administrative workflows, making content updates and membership interactions more efficient.

AEF Community Directory Screenshot

UX/UI Design

Modernized and user-prioritized.

Our design process began with a UX audit to determine key areas of the site that could be causing confusion or frustration among users. With a dual emphasis on accessibility and brand consistency, we evolved the most vital design elements and pages.

This evolution included prioritizing easily digestible member benefits, news and program information on the homepage. We also designed a new member benefits page and redesigned the UI of the resource library and community directory. We used the styling on these pages as the foundation for the rest of the website. We also incorporated rich media, including a custom video for the hero sections of the homepage and member benefits page.

AEF Member Benefits Screenshot

Content Optimization

Clearer content for happier trails.

The previous site had a lot of pages with duplicate content and a structure that caused users to jump around to find program and membership information and related resources. We reworked the content on key pages and led an extensive content migration process for all of the site’s existing pages, news items and resources.

This process involved reorganizing and adapting content to support the new design and architecture. We also streamlined and combined content where applicable to reduce redundancies and improve focus for clearer user journeys. Finally, we set up necessary URL redirects to prevent broken links and maintain SEO performance.

AEF News

Development

Built with growth in mind.

As with all our web projects, we leveraged the latest version of WordPress with a customized Block Editor experience. This greatly simplifies content management for AEF’s team and creates an always-on-brand experience as they continue to add new content over time. We also incorporated WCAG 2.1 AA best practices for improved usability across all devices.

Some of the new site’s core features include:

Resource Hub
A robust resource library complete with advanced search and filters to organize an array of resources.

Community Directory
A searchable directory for users to quickly find equine business, coaches, clubs and more.  

Board Portal
A password protected board portal for housing meeting minutes & governance docs. 

Events Calendar
A new events calendar with filters for event types and added the ability to accept and approve event submissions.

Dynamic Web Forms
Web forms for contact inquiries, event registrations, and membership sign-ups, ensuring proper validation, automated notifications, and CRM integration.

HorseReg Integration
The site seamlessly links to AEF’s external member portal for sign ups and login.

“The website redesign and content migration project has been a resounding success, and we are thrilled with the outcome.”

– Sonia Dentu

Alberta Equestrian Federation Logo

What’s Next

Galloping into their digital future.

AEF’s new website is easier to navigate, more intuitive, and tailored to their member needs. Through our comprehensive training and ongoing support, the AEF team can swiftly and confidently move forward through their digital transformation. Their new site is responsive, accessible, and most importantly: captures the heart of equestrian life in Alberta.