Responsive website boosts income and volunteers for Battersea
Howard Lake | 10 September 2014 | News
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home have responded to the growth in mobile access by redesigning their website so that it was fully responsive. As a result the charity has seen volunteering requests, rehoming applications and donations increase via the site.
The site overhaul, conducted by digital and direct marketing company WPN Chameleon, followed the charity’s decision in 2012 to digitise its whole operation.
Salesforce used
The site is based on Salesforce as a CRM platform to store and manage the charity’s animal information. WPN Chameleon won the pitch to design the new website with a new user experience and link it directly with Salesforce.
Advertisement
In designing the new site, WPN Chameleon used a series of user stories that Battersea had already put together. These acted as examples of the actual and varying information requirements people had of the site. These were fed into an interactive prototype of the new site, which was then tested.
Mobile access
One of the main requirements of the new site was that it had to be responsive to any kind of device, in particular mobile devices. The charity had noticed that around half of visits to its website were already made using tablets and smartphones.
WPN Chameleon designed two concepts for the site, which were presented to the Battersea team. The best ideas from each were then taken by the design and user experience (UX) teams to produce the final design in terms of navigation, look and feel, and information architecture.
Steve Shields, Digital Project Manager at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, said:
“The Home is a world-class establishment, and this project aimed to bring our systems – both internal and external – up to that very high standard. We are very pleased with the way the website has been received, and have never had so many applications to become a volunteer or rehome an animal through the site. And it’s driving fundraising too, across multiple devices and payment channels, which is brilliant news for the home and the animals it cares for.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.