Pooler Paws is a non-profit that provides many services for the local feral cat population, including adoptions and trap-neuter-release (TNR). I started volunteering in early 2023, feeding feral cat colonies around town.
After seeing a number of problems with their site, I reached out to the charity owner and offered to redesign their website.
Their previous site was cluttered and wasn’t user-friendly, causing people to click away. The header and navigation menu were huge and took up the whole screen. Some elements were even cut off.
I wanted to be creative at first, using an eclectic color scheme and shapes.
😬 Yeah, not great.
Thankfully, I remembered advice from one of my graphic design professors: “Never get married to your first design.”
My next iterations simplified the color scheme, emphasized imagery, and used best practices to clean up some of the elements.
Looking at the existing site’s analytics, I noticed the adopt page was the most visited page, but its user flow was complicated since the user had to navigate to the forms and applications page using the nav bar.
To simplify the process, I placed the application right on the adopt page, so the user can more easily find it. When the button is clicked, a lightbox appears with two more buttons for the paper and online versions of the application.
The previous site had a hard to use FAQ page. All of the questions were shown as a wall of text. They were organized with section headers, but there wasn’t an easy way to navigate to them.
To improve the experience, I added a tab interface to filter the questions. Also, to reduce clutter, I made each answer expandable, allowing the user to easily find their question.
Everyone knows that projects aren’t as straightforward as they seem, and this was no exception. The main issue was that the existing site administrator did not want to make any of the proposed design changes. The charity owner and I decided that giving them time and space would be the best path forward.
After waiting, and explaining that I would be keeping most of the existing content and I would still be willing to work together with them, the administrator was still reluctant. Finally, the charity owner decided that I would be the site administrator and my design could proceed.
A modern Wix websiteImproved usabilityIncreased adoptions and support
