A Union That Connects Digitally Too

The Cooperative Union of Slovenia is a professional association with voluntary membership that supports the development of cooperatives and represents the interests of its members both nationally and internationally.

Today, it connects 58 agricultural and forestry cooperatives and three companies, while approximately 13,000 Slovenian farmers are members of its affiliated cooperatives. Cooperatives play an important role in Slovenian agriculture, short food supply chains and rural development.

The Union’s activities are broad. It provides its members with legal and economic advisory services, keeps them informed about current developments, promotes business cooperation, organises training programmes and supports the promotion of the cooperative model.

The Cooperative Union of Slovenia website needed to serve two very different groups of users.

On one side is the general public, looking for information about the Union, cooperatives, its members, current developments and events.

On the other are cooperatives and other member organisations that require access to professional information, documents, reports and internal notices as part of their daily work.

The challenge was therefore to establish a single digital environment with two clearly defined roles: a public website for presentation and communication, and a secure intranet environment designed to support members.

At the same time, the project required us to organise an extensive and highly diverse content structure.

The website brings together information about the Union and its activities, membership, cooperative development, international activities, news, press releases, events, publications and other current content.

An important part of the platform is also dedicated to the presentation of member organisations, which operate throughout Slovenia and are organised by region.

We began the project with an analysis of the content, user groups and existing communication needs.

Based on these findings, we developed a new information architecture, user journeys and functional concept for the platform.

The public section was designed as a modern content-driven website, placing current news and events alongside information about the Union, its activities, member organisations and the wider cooperative sector.

We also integrated publications, newsletter subscriptions, contact functionalities and links to other projects managed by the Union.

A key part of the project is the intranet for registered users, which extends the public website with a secure information environment for member organisations.

The Union can publish internal notices, reports, documentation and other professional content in one central location, while members can access these resources through their individual user accounts.

The entire solution was developed using Craft CMS, enabling editors to independently manage a wide range of content types while supporting the platform’s continued functional and editorial growth.

With the new platform, the Cooperative Union of Slovenia gained a unified digital hub for both public communication and collaboration with its members.

Information that had previously been distributed across different channels and documents is now more clearly structured and accessible to users according to their needs and access rights.

Following the redesign, website traffic increased by 60%, while users now view approximately twice as much content on average. Engagement with current news and events has also increased.

The clearer structure shortened the path to key information, while the new content architecture enables the Union to communicate its activities, member organisations and current developments more actively.

The intranet represents another important outcome of the project, moving communication between the Union and its members into a more organised digital environment.

Today, 90% of member organisations regularly use the secure section of the platform, while access to reports, notices and other internal materials is faster and centralised.

The new solution is therefore more than a redesigned website.

It is an integrated digital platform for the public, the Union and its members, supporting information sharing, collaboration and the continued development of Slovenia’s cooperative sector.