In early January we launched another website that was dedicated to helping the dog and cat communities. They aren’t exactly a rescue, but the work that they do falls into the same lines, since they are effectively helping save the at risk animal populations in Long Beach, CA, and surrounding areas.
Diana and Tamara (along with all of their volunteers) run a low cost clinic every month in an effort to help low income families get their pets fixed, and get them vaccines that may be otherwise unattainable. They’ve been doing this since 2013, and they estimate somewhere over 8,000 pets have been fixed. This drastically reduces the number of strays and ferals that end up in shelters, making what they do essential.
Fix Long Beach came to us as a recommendation from our friends over at K911 ResQ. They were in desperate need of a new web developer because the person who had been managing their site previously wasn’t able to provide the upkeep any longer. We stepped in and helped them with some minor upgrades to their site that were long overdue, and added in some much needed new features that they had been wanting for some time.
Eventually it became apparent that more work was needed to get the website to where they wanted and needed it to be, but we hit a wall with the existing build. The website had been built in Wordpress, using a very generic template that had been hacked and mangled to force features it wasn’t really built for. On top of that there was no real optimization done to the images or content, which made the site speed and visitor experience inconsistent.
Near the end of 2019 they came to us, being very pleased with what we had managed to do already, and asked if we could meet to discuss a brand new site. Of course we are always more than happy to talk shop, and after some discussion we got to it.
The new website would be tailored much more to the specifications of the client, and building it from scratch inside of the Wordpress ecosystem would make it so we still have easy access to content changes and can manage updates and upgrades from just about anywhere.
The main goal of the website was to make it easier for visitors to find the information they needed, and quickly. Usually this is the details on the next mobile clinic, so it was critical that we integrate a calendar into the website where they could list on the details for clinics and fundraisers.
It was extremely important that visitors be able to get all the information they needed from the website in regards to clinic guidelines, so we added in more written content, optimized existing content for clarity, and added in more visual aids to help visitors.
The other important feature was adding in a way for visitors to view current animals up for adoption and then apply for adoption if they wanted. Since this required a 3rd party application, we had to figure out the best way to add in the dynamic information and make it match the website so it didn’t look out of place. This makes it easy for Fix Long Beach to update their pet list in the program they’ve been using and have it automatically reflect those changes on the website without any extra work.
Part of being able to make this work was making sure that they were up to date on internet industry standards, so we also got them set up with an SSL certificate and secured their pages, which helps on multiple levels.
Other features we added were a search function, a newsletter signup, and an Instagram feed that updates automatically. We wanted to make things as easy as possible, while giving Fix Long Beach a unique and personally tailored look that matches with their requirements. And of course it’s designed in such a way that upkeep is easy, and any future enhancements can be built into the platform much easier than trying to force a pre-designed template to something it shouldn’t.
When we finished building the new site, they were thrilled with how it turned out. Everything is easier to find, it loads much quicker than before, and updating things is a breeze compared to the previous version. If you want to learn more about them and what they do, visit Fix Long Beach at their website: https://fixlongbeachpets.com
