Based on a rural site near Kendal in Cumbria, Animal Rescue Cumbria has grown from its humble beginnings in 1972 into a well-established Charity, which rescues and re-homes some 300 dogs, cats and kittens each year. They offer a secure and caring environment for animals whose owners, for whatever reason, are unable to care for them any longer. Helping animals to find permanent, loving homes.

Animal Rescue Cumbria came to us with a website that wasn’t performing efficiently and was difficult to manage. As they rehome multiple animals a day, they needed a site that could be easily adapted and could handle the constant changeover.

Speed was another aspect that needed improvement. Because of the constant change over of animals and information, the faster the information input, the better. They also needed to be able to see the analytics for the website. This was crucial for them to be able to find out where visitors to the site were located. General modernisation of the side was required alongside an updated mobile-friendly version.

The initial strategy was to fix up the existing website to reduce costs and allow them to continue to use the website that was built. However, it soon became apparent that this would be a time hole that would ultimately take longer and cost more.

The current WordPress website was built using a lot of custom code and confusing configuration that was simply unusable for someone who isn’t a full-time web developer.  Making changes in one place was having detrimental effects on the website in other places. Due to this, we decided to rebuild the website from a fresh WordPress install with a robust theme that would allow the charity to update and change the animals up for adoption with speed and efficiency.

The design of the website was fundamentally ok, but there were areas that we could improve and build upon which make the website more appealing for the user and make the overall user experience easier.

A well-designed website, alongside one which functions effectively, creates a coherent and reliable experience.

Animal Rescue Cumbria also needed us for WordPress training so they could independently manage the content and images across all the pages of the website. This would include adding and removing dogs and cats as well as updating board members and volunteer information.

Once we had a clear plan of what was needed for Animal Rescue Cumbria, we implemented our changes. We used user-friendly custom fields, which would modify the pets posting page in WordPress to make it easier for the charity to keep updated efficiently.

It was vital that the website looked and worked well on laptops and most importantly mobiles. The theme we choose does most of the heavy lifting in terms of content and layout shifts, but certain parts of the website need to be adapted to ensure a seamless experience for mobile visitors, which is the most common device for visiting the website.

Previously, their website had no Google tracking or analytics within their site. This needed changing so the team at Animal Rescue Cumbria could find out the who, what, why’s and when of website visitors, which provides data to use to improve services and user experiences.

Knowing the benefits of tracking analytics, we installed Google Analytics on the website. This provided a clear method that would measure website activity and help keep track of site visitors.

Training and support was included in the cost of the redevelopment and changes can now be made easily without incurring additional costs that can go towards helping more animals in need. When the occasion arises where a little support is needed, we have no issues helping with either advice, a video guide or a video call to make the change and demonstrate how to do it themselves (if they want) in the future.