In this digital world, any organization, even a non-profit, must have a properly designed and easy-to-use website. Such a site should not only help to convey its purpose and the services it offers but also promote adoptions, recruit volunteers, and collect funds. In this post, we shall discuss, generally, what should be considered when designing a web presence for a pet rescue organization. In particular, we’ll survey different CMSs and hosting options and highlight the benefits of employing a ready animal shelter website template or layout.
Content Management Systems (CMSs) and Hosting Options
Users without any programming skills can build and maintain a web resource using content management systems. A CMS is easy to use because it allows you to keep in touch with visitors by updating content, adding new images, including additional links in articles, and performing other interactive functions.
These are three CMSs that site owners like:
- WordPress: Among the most used web platforms, WordPress boasts thousands of free plugins and themes. It is popular because of its simplicity. In particular, content management and customization are made easy through the user-friendly interface.
- Joomla: The other strong CMS, Joomla, also offers numerous extensions and templates suitable for building nonprofit sites. It provides sophisticated tools for handling intricate hierarchical structures of the content.
- Drupal: Drupal’s high scale-up capacity along with a wide range of customization make it suitable for bigger shelters. The taxonomy system is strong and enables the classification and categorization of products, events, and other resources to be orderly and logical.
What about hosting? Simply put, it’s a place where a site is stored. Hosting providers usually offer three types of hosts:
- Shared Hosting: Small shelters with few resources will find it a reasonably affordable choice. On the other hand, it is associated with lower speed since it shares server resources.
- Dedicated Hosting: Big animal care centers should go for dedicated hosting if they plan complex websites. It is exclusive and offers superior performance to other hosts.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting: It is an intermediate solution between shared and dedicated that provides a higher degree of control and resources. It is more secure than shared hosting and still cheaper than dedicated hosting.
Why Rely on an Animal Shelter Website Template?
A website theme gives you the ability to start with a ready-made design. It is complete with the basics and even offers a few samples that anyone can easily tweak to suit their needs. In essence, using templates enables web designers to develop sites at once and, at best, in an appealing design. Web developers can also be able to separate styling from their coding and focus on writing clean code whenever any change or update is needed.
Now let’s review the key advantages and features of a web theme:
- Time and Cost-Efficiency: As we said before, templates are pre-designed pages used in site creation. They are more affordable ($12–120) and save time compared to site-building from the beginning.
- Professional Design: The professional designers made them attractive and modern. Plus, good usability and user experience standards are usually part of their usage.
- Mobile Responsiveness: The themes are created to provide a responsive design that looks good and functions well on both smartphones and laptops.
- Customization Flexibility: The best part, the templates can be modified to suit the character of your shelter as well as the specific branding and content requirements. These include personalizing your organization’s color, font, images, and content.
Inspiration from Well-Crafted Animal Shelter Websites
How about we decide on a better web design by comparing and contrasting with competitors, analyzing them, and doing much better? Three good animal shelter web designs are right here; you need not go any further.
Petfinder
Petfinder.com is a user-friendly online platform that connects animals looking for homes to prospective pet owners. The website is clean and well laid out so that it is easy to navigate when searching for fluffy companions by location or cat/dog breed. It comes with quality pictures, pet information in detail, and handy resources. More so, Petfinder allows the user to save his favorite pet and to directly talk to the shelters. At last, with all these challenges, Petfinder remains an easy and effective place to find and adopt a dog or a cat.
AnimalHouseShelter
Animalhouseshelter.com has a good design and it is not complicated to browse through its pages. The homepage displays high-resolution images with CTAs above and below. The design is simple so that visitors can find the adoption, volunteering, and donation pages easily. The site also features a blog section with the latest news and stories to tell, as well as an events calendar. In the long run, it illustrates the purpose of the shelters and inspires the participants.
BestFriends
Bestfriends.com is modern, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. The homepage starts with a big banner with appealing pictures and obvious directions. Information on adoption, volunteers, or donations is easily accessed with the aid of a navigation menu that is easy to locate and well-categorized. It has heart-melting success stories and resourceful links that guide users on how they can adopt dogs, cats, and rodents. Overall, the design supports the objectives of the organization, which are to find homes for homeless pets.
Choosing a Top Animal Shelter Website Template
Here are some of the top-selling web themes created just for pet care centers. Don’t proceed any further — take a look at them below.
AnimalShelter
It is a nice simple solution for veterinary organizations called AnimalShelter. One of the best features of this platform is the user interface kit. With this, you can tailor-make something original for your business brand. It has an additional photo gallery which makes it easier to share adoptable dogs and cats. Better yet, you are allowed to add 35 HTML5 pages with sections like lost & found, pet services, news, etc. Additionally, the parallax effect creates a beautiful, impressive, and engaging environment that enhances the browsing experience of the visitors.
PetInn
PetInn is perfect for pet adoption centers. It is an attractive, usable, and very capable theme. It is powered by a Cherry Framework drag-and-drop builder that lets you alter your webpage easily. Your organization has a high chance of achieving a distinctive and interesting online presence with the various layout options available to you. PetInn also has various content modules that enable you to display all the available pets, success stories, and volunteer opportunities. Also, the mockup comes packed with custom widgets such as a donation tracker and search to ensure that your site is highly interactive and functional.
Petrazzi
The answer for pet care businesses is Petrazzi. Creating a stunning online presence is now as easy as a drag and drop. The Revolution Slider enables you to highlight the services, team members, and testimonials to attract prospective clients. You can add an image gallery and upload photos that will cause a pleasant sensation for visitors. Additionally, WooCommerce is supported so that product or service transactions are hassle-free. Overall, Petrazzi helps in developing a website that is simple yet professional and attractive to furry fans.
General Recommendations for Creating an Online Platform for an Animal Shelter
Define the Purpose
Start by outlining the principal objectives of your virtual existence. Do you want to be known for providing adoption facilities for animals? Or are you willing to inform the public about your actions or what you have done as an organization? As a result of this, you will be able to determine your purpose which will help you come up with content and design.
User-Friendly Navigation
The navigation has to be logical and user-friendly. Put together various useful details in the form of categories like adoption processes, volunteering avenues, and donation pathways. It enables possible visitors to find what they want.
Engaging Visuals
Using HD photos and videos of cute animals can significantly boost your website’s beauty. To develop an emotional attachment between the visitors, communicate happy adoption stories, volunteer experiences, and the facilities.
Clear Call-to-Action
Facilitate action on the part of the visitor, e.g., adopting, volunteering, and donating. Make sure to incorporate prominent and stylish buttons or links as part of your engagement strategy.
Conclusion
Designing a functional pet rescue webpage involves a strategic approach, user-oriented design, and suitable CMS and hosting alternatives. To have an attractive, functioning site that markets your mission, sparks adoption, and fulfills your organization’s needs, consider these general recommendations and explore different online competitors.
Most importantly, consider the advantages of an animal shelter website template. These tools allow one to design a site from scratch and save time as well as resources. Besides, there are dozens of web themes for rescue groups and care organizations. They enable you to display the facility’s purpose and advertise pets that need adoption. They also feature built-in functionalities like donation buttons and voluntary sign-up forms.
To Create a Website, What Should I Expect to Pay?
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It’s time to welcome you to the wild zone of site-building. Prepare for an amazing ride as TemplateMonster discloses how expensive it is to construct a website. In one fun video, the digital provider will provide you with answers for domain registration and hosting fees, design service, content creation, and site maintenance. Find out how you can transform your web dreams into reality.
FAQ
What would one expect in a WordPress theme for animal shelter?
These assets provide many options such as page-building tools, content blocks, and prebuilt widgets. They can all be customized to create beautiful designs with minimum effort.
Are there any technical issues I should be aware of when using an animal shelter website template?
In most cases, premium assets are underpinned by the provider and the vendors/developers. This means that you need not worry about the occurrence of petty technical difficulties.
How flexible is an animal rescue website template?
It enables a variety of customizable options whereby one can customize every single page to their desire. The pages may include multiple columns, sliders, and tabs, among other features. This makes the process of creating a website quite flexible without the need for coding skills.
What should I choose—an animal shelter website template WordPress free or paid?
A paid product will give you more features, customizations, and, most importantly, customer support for the best start. However, if you want something simple that will get up fast and easily with minimum resources then choosing a freebie is an option.
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