A charity site that sort of grew with us!

Information capture

A major function of the site is to reduce the amount of time staff spend answering calls and e-mails about dogs for adoption and homes available.  The site provides a series of forms which are completed by visitors and the captured information is then e-mailed to the appropriate member of staff.  Correctly routing this information is itself a major contribution to reducing missed or lost messages.

Facebook integration

This site makes the most of connections to Facebook.  The charity has relied upon their Facebook page for some time, so there is a wealth of material already available on that platform.

  • Messages from visitors asking about dogs and offering dogs for adoption are copied from Facebook every hour and listed in the sidebar.  This has the benefit of increasing the energy on the page but also attracting attention to messages that may otherwise have been missed.
  • The scrolling banner at the top of the screen is pulled from photo albums saved in Facebook.  We removed the ability to click on these pictures to follow a link and the slide show is now for decoration only.

Staff-Only area

It became clear that the charity needed an area for sharing information about running the organisation.  This is hidden from public view and is accessible only when logged in.

Knowledge Base

There is a Knowledge Base to share documents about Policy and Process.
This is invaluable when on-boarding new team-members and answers the questions:

  • “Why do we do what we do?” and
  • “How do I do…?