Helping to save world plant life

The Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) project, run by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew required a user friendly online donation system to allow customers to adopt a seed or a species online. Customers needed to be able to adopt for themselves or as a gift for others, and then have the ability to generate a branded adoption certificate.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is one of the world's leading botanic garden, and is first and foremost a scientific institution. With its collections of living and preserved plants, of plant products and botanical information, it forms an encyclopaedia of knowledge about the plant world. Over the past 10 years, the MSB project has so far involved more than 3.5 billion seeds from nearly 30,000 species being collected and stored.

Adopters from all over the world now receive a personalised certificate featuring a picture of the plant they have adopted as well as information about the progress of Kew’s conservation work.

“We chose Pixl8 because they have experience in online membership, they’re flexible and could meet our tight pre-Christmas time frame,” says Graeme Wotherspoon, Kew’s Membership Development Manager.

“Pixl8 had already produced clean, well thought-out web designs for other membership organisations and we knew they could provide a smooth journey for Kew website users, from making a donation to receiving an adoption certificate.”

The Adopt a Seed online project was launched a week before Christmas and was well received. Sixty seeds were sold within the first two days to people as far apart as Denmark, the USA and Australia, raising £1,500.

“We will also be using Google Analytics and within about six months we should have a good insight into our web traffic data and marketing effectiveness,” says Graeme.

To find out more about the project, read the case study here, or why not visit the MSB website and get adopting!?