How Eleven65 replaced three failing websites with one platform
that now welcomes 6,000 visitors a month
Misty Isles Economic Development Society (MIEDS), a non-profit supporting sustainable tourism and economic development across Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off northern British Columbia and the territory of the Haida Nation. MIEDS needed a digital presence capable of representing an entire region, its communities, businesses, artists, and culture, alongside the practical needs of trip planning.
When MIEDS came to Eleven65, Haida Gwaii’s digital presence wasn’t just outdated, it was actively failing.
Tourism and commerce information was spread across three separate websites. One had gone completely offline, while another had developed backend errors so severe that neither MIEDS nor its previous agency could access it to make changes. Visitors, residents, and businesses had no single place to go, MIEDS had no single place to manage and visitors regularly contacted MIEDS for information that couldn't be found online.
The challenge went well beyond rebuilding a website. Trip planning, accommodations, attractions, artists, accessibility resources, and community and economic development content all needed to be brought into one clear, manageable platform. The new website also needed to house more than 280 directory listings and become the primary travel and tourism resource for Haida Gwaii.
Every piece of content, imagery, and design required careful review and approval, with Haida language represented alongside English throughout the site. There was also a significant technical constraint, the website needed to be built on Squarespace, as per the requirements of the client, which did not natively support a directory of this scale. Building the experience MIEDS needed would require custom code and integrations beyond the platform’s standard functionality.
This wasn’t simply a website redesign. MIEDS needed a reliable digital platform it could manage internally, while meeting the technical, cultural, and practical needs of the communities it represented.We audited what we could from the existing websites and consolidated their content into a single Squarespace platform, creating one centralized resource for tourism, commerce, and community information.
To support the more than 280 directory listings, we integrated a third-party directory system and developed custom code that allowed each listing to function as its own dedicated page within the website. We worked closely with MIEDS to incorporate both Haida languages alongside English throughout the site, while ensuring imagery, colours, typography, logos, and the overall design aligned with approved organizational and Haida Nation standards. This required us to learn how the languages needed to function within the website and work through an extensive review process.
Culturally significant content and design decisions were reviewed with MIEDS rather than assumed, resulting in a more deliberate process and a platform the organization and community could stand behind.
SEO focused on protecting and consolidating the strong organic search visibility Haida Gwaii had already established as a destination. We restructured content and search signals around the new website, helping direct that existing demand toward one authoritative digital resource.
Following launch, we trained the MIEDS team to manage day-to-day content internally, giving them greater control over the platform and reducing their reliance on outside developers for routine updates.Within the first three months of launch, the new platform was already outperforming the previous websites:
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4,000–6,000 monthly visitors, compared to roughly 2,000–3,000 on the previous primary tourism website.
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10% increase in newsletter sign-ups compared to the previous website.
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280+ directory listings launched, giving tourism operators, businesses, artists, and community organizations a centralized digital home.
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Day-to-day management brought in-house, giving the MIEDS team control over routine content and updates without relying on an outside developer.
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An ongoing partnership with Eleven65, extending beyond the original website launch into continued development and support.
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Haida Gwaii is the territory of the Haida Nation, and building a platform representing its people, communities, and land came with real responsibility. Every culturally significant decision on this project moved through collaboration and approval rather than assumption, an approach that shaped the timeline, the process, and the outcome. Eleven65 is grateful to MIEDS for the trust and guidance provided throughout.
Haw'aa | Haawa.
"We hired eleven65 Digital to recreate the website for the Misty Isles Economic Development Society (MIEDS), and the experience was excellent from start to finish. Their team was professional, responsive, and genuinely invested in understanding our organization, our audience, and what we needed the site to accomplish.
They guided us through the process clearly, brought strong design and technical expertise, and delivered a website that looks modern, is easy to navigate, and better reflects who we are. Communication was consistent, timelines were respected, and any changes or questions were handled quickly and thoughtfully.
If you're looking for a dependable team that produces high-quality work and makes the process smooth, I highly recommend Eleven65 Digital. We're thrilled with the final result and would gladly work with them again."
Desiree - Executive Director, MIEDS - via Google Reviews
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