Sustainable Seas Trust (SST) is a science-based organisation dedicated to protecting Africa’s seas and enabling its blue economy – connecting communities, researchers, and decision-makers across 32 African countries. With a rapidly growing membership network, SST needed a powerful digital platform to serve, engage, and retain its diverse community of ocean champions.
The Ethical Agency was commissioned to design, build, and maintain the African Marine Network (AMN) – a fully featured membership website at amn.sst.org.za – engineered to connect stakeholders, gate content by tier, and reflect SST’s mission from the very first click.
The Brief
The project presented a technically sophisticated challenge: build a membership website that delivers differentiated digital experiences across multiple membership tiers, each with its own content permissions, benefits, and user journey. The site needed to be secure, scalable, and accessible – while staying firmly within SST’s established brand guidelines and communicating the trust and credibility that SST’s science-led work demands.
Tiered Membership Architecture
At the heart of the AMN platform sits a three-tier membership structure – Blue Ambassador, Blue Champion, and Blue Visionary – each unlocking progressively richer access to SST’s resources and community. Members at each level receive a carefully curated set of benefits, including early event invitations and digital toolkits, exclusive content, course discounts, and access to gated members-only areas of the site. Login-authenticated content ensures members access only what their tier permits, creating both value and aspiration across the membership ladder.
Building this required custom integration of membership management functionality, role-based content access control, and secure user authentication — all within a performant, user-friendly WordPress environment.
Brand-Led Design
Every design decision was rooted in SST’s brand guidelines – the deep navy, teal, and ocean-inspired palette that speaks to the Trust’s marine identity, combined with clean, purposeful layouts that position SST as a credible, science-led organisation. The result is a site that looks and feels authentically SST: professionally executed, visually cohesive, and built to inspire confidence in every visitor and member.
Our creative design services ensure every website we build accurately reflects our clients’ identities – and the AMN site is no exception.
Renewable Energy-Powered Hosting
Aligned with SST’s environmental mission and TEA’s commitment to sustainable digital practice, the African Marine Network website is hosted on renewable energy-powered infrastructure. This reduces the platform’s digital carbon footprint – ensuring SST’s technology stack is as aligned with its values as its programmes are. For an organisation dedicated to protecting Africa’s oceans, hosting on green servers isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a statement of intent.
Learn more about how we build sustainable websites for impact-driven organisations.
Ongoing Website Maintenance
TEA provides ongoing website maintenance for the AMN platform – covering security updates, plugin management, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement. SST’s team can stay focused on their mission, confident that their digital platform is actively maintained, secure, and always performing at its best.
The Outcome
The African Marine Network website gives SST a scalable, sophisticated digital infrastructure to grow and deepen its membership base across Africa. It strengthens stakeholder engagement, supports community upliftment, and advances SST’s vision of a flourishing blue economy – backed by a technical foundation purpose-built to last and grow.
Explore more of our web design and development case studies, or start a project with us today.
