Capital Area Animal Welfare Society: Website Redesign

The Capital Area Animal Welfare Society (CAAWS) reached out to have their website redesigned. Their previous website had become outdated and disorganized. It was difficult to navigate and very busy. They needed a more visual website that allowed them to highlight their animals for adoption, signature events, and services.

To revamp their website, I first provided my initial thoughts on how to improve the navigation and overall layout at the consultation meeting. The old website had varying top navigation tabs, and I knew we could reorganize and combine these to be more user-friendly.

Once they decided to work with me, I asked them to provide examples of websites they liked, who their competition was, and their goals for the new site. We determined that the most important things a visitor of their website could do was: donate money, sign up to be a volunteer, or find an animal for adoption. They also wanted to make sure that their signature fundraising events were easy to find and could be highlighted at certain times of the year.

To achieve all these things, I went with a very visual design with simplified navigation. The homepage has a featured content section for events and other highlights, a featured animals for adoption scrolling section, a call-to-action banner for their newsletter, and call-to-action icons which focus on their top three goals for the site. In addition, there are social media icons at the very top and bottom of the page.

Check out the CAAWS homepage before and after images below:

The adoption pages received a make-over as well. Here you will see that the adoption pages (separated by dog or cat) are more visual. Visitors can simply click on an animal’s image to learn more about them! Before and after images are below.

I truly enjoyed working on this website. This was not my first time designing a website, but it was my one of my first client websites, so I also learned a lot about how to improve my processes. The only downside to redesigning the website for CAAWS was that I wanted to adopt every single dog! Unfortunately, my own adopted dog Eleanor would not approve of that. To learn more about CAAWS and to support their mission, visit www.caaws.org!