Mission Working Dogs trains purpose-bred dogs to aid individuals with disabilities so that the handler can live a life to the fullest and more independently.
Mission Working Dogs strives to better the lives of community members who are living with a disability by providing properly trained service dogs to those in need, as well as training therapy and facility dogs to bring mental well-being to the people of Maine such as those in nursing homes, hospitals, and schools.
I had so much fun learning about the great work this organization does! This was a Catchafire volunteer project that I was honored to be part of.
Mission Working Dogs needed major updates to their website's layout, design, SEO, and navigation to showcase their programs and activities.
The organization also wanted to improve their website user experience, wanting the site to be as easy to use as possible. The usability was improved so that visitors can find what they're looking for within 3 clicks on the site.
As an organization, Mission Working Dogs is only two years old and wanted guidance on how to optimize their website to reach more people. I did a review of their website and presented them with strategies to increase their reach. I then implemented on-page SEO strategies to improve their ranking in search results.
This project was estimated to save the organization $4,586, allowing them to reach more people both in need of service dogs and those who will donate to their cause.
Mission Working Dogs is a veteran owned non-profit run by two female Army veterans both who are double amputees. They want to grow their organization so they can help more individuals in need of service dogs.
Brand colors were selected for the website from the organization’s logo. One of my favorite tools for choosing colors is coolors.co. I uploaded the logo and was able to select colors from it, then I went to the palette generator to find complementary colors. I always choose an “almost” black and “almost” white color to use in place of black and white so they’re not so harsh.
For consistency in branding and to create a clean, no-nonsense, modern look, Verdana was selected for headings and Roboto for body text.
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Very hand that fed long doggo porgo woofer most angery pupper ever seen. Pupperino blop wow very biscit lotsa pats such treat wow such tempt pupper, wrinkler very jealous pupper blop. Stop it fren boof doggo ruff mlem, smol bork very jealous pupper.
The website builds a clear path from learning about Missing Working Dogs and their services, to applying for a dog and getting involved. The website is made up of these main elements:
Visitors need to know what the organization does as soon as they land on the home page. To accomplish this, I chose an eye-catching image that represents the organization and included clear calls-to-action so visitors know what to do next. I also featured their programs and how to get involved, along with the types of dogs they train, so that visitors are only one click away from what they need.
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One goal of the website update was to make the site more accessible. This included making the site easier to read by:
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To allow the organization to do more of what they do best, more visitors need to find the site. One strategy to accomplish this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which helps search engines, such as Google, find your site.
This included updates such as adding page titles and meta descriptions with strategically chosen keywords, adding alternate text for each image, having a clear heading hierarchy for each page, improving the site speed, and much more.
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All of the updates were focused on improving the visitor’s experience on the site, such as readability; providing interesting, useful & relevant information in an attractive way, and a fast site.
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