The client
Te Arawa River Iwi Trust (TARIT) represents the environmental, cultural, and community interests of three Te Arawa River iwi within the Upper Waikato River catchment area: Ngāti Kearoa–Ngāti Tuarā, Tūhourangi–Ngāti Wāhiao, and Ngati Tahu–Ngati Whaoa.
Their work is meaningful and wide-reaching from freshwater restoration and weed management, to cultural events like the Tira Hoe, environmental planning, and fostering strong relationships with councils and Crown agencies. They needed a website that could carry that weight professionally, clearly, and with mana.
The challenge: A website that no longer represented them
The original website had served its purpose in the early days but gradually started showing its age. TARIT has grown significantly as an organisation. Their projects are expanding, their stakeholder relationships deepening, and their public profile has become increasingly important. Their website needed to grow with them.
The wish list for the new site included:
- An easy-to-navigate site with an updated layout
- A clear visual identity and cohesive brand story
- Content that’s easy to access without too many clicks
- A mobile-friendly design
- A look and feel that reflects the mana of the organisation or the beauty of Te Arawa’s rivers and environment
- A site the TARIT team can update themselves, to change information, share news, add documents and more
Our approach
We started where we always do, with listening. The team at TARIT have a clear sense of who they are and what they stand for. Our job was to translate that into a digital experience that felt right: grounded in the natural world, respectful of tikanga, and easy for whānau, partners, and the public to navigate.
Visual identity & design direction
We developed a design language rooted in the environment TARIT protects. Deep teal and forest greens reflect the awa and surrounding ngahere. Custom tāmoko-inspired graphic elements appear throughout the site as subtle background textures, connecting the digital space to Te Arawa cultural heritage without overpowering the content.
The result is a site that feels calm, authoritative, and distinctly of this place.
Simplified, purposeful navigation
The original site had an overwhelming navigation bar with too many items competing for attention. We stripped that back to six clear sections – About, Projects, Pānui, Maps, Documents, and Contact Us – making it immediately obvious for site visitors to know where to go.
Each page received a consistent hero treatment with te reo Māori labels, tāmoko graphic overlays, and stunning landscape photography that immediately communicates the organisation’s connection to the land and water.
As we do for most of our clients, we built the site on WordPress using Elementor, a flexible, user-friendly platform. The visual editor makes it easy for TARIT to update content themselves, and the responsive design ensures a seamless experience across all users’ devices. The result is a modern, scalable website that’s as easy to manage as it is to navigate.
Content-led page structure
Every page was built around how visitors actually use the site:
- Home – A powerful hero statement, vision and mission, quick-access navigation cards, project highlights, a landscape banner, and a supporter carousel
- Projects – Clean card layout showcasing all six active projects with imagery and summaries
- About – Team profiles with photos, names and roles to build trust and transparency
- Documents – Accordion-style document library, organised by category for easy access
- Maps – Visual map cards for catchment and environment resources
- Pānui – A news hub for keeping whānau and stakeholders updated
- Contact – Simple, clean form with contact details and a recaptcha for spam protection
The result
The transformation speaks for itself. What was once a flat, text-heavy site is now a visually rich, easy-to-navigate digital home that reflects the depth and mana of Te Arawa River Iwi Trust.
Key improvements we made:
- A cohesive visual identity rooted in the natural environment
- Streamlined navigation reduced from 10+ items to six clear sections
- Fully responsive, mobile-friendly design
- Consistent hero banners with te reo Māori labels across all pages
- A staff-updatable news and projects system
- A clean, accessible document library
- Beautiful use of local photography throughout
What the client got
TARIT now has a website they’re proud to share – one that opens doors, whether that’s a funding conversation with a regional council, a new partnership with Crown agencies, or simply a whānau member looking for the latest Pānui update.
