HOPE Animal-Assisted Crisis Response is a non-profit organization that trains comfort dogs and animal handler response teams, and sends their specially-trained teams to provide emotional support in the wake of crisis events.
HOPE has a long history of serving the community, and they’ve grown into a seven-region organization with volunteers nationwide.
When we connected with HOPE, they had an outdated website that didn’t drive donations or support their membership.
- Their website didn’t function well on mobile devices.
- Potential members had to sift through walls of text and redundant information, in order to find out how to attend a training with their dog.
- Visitors who wanted to support the organization didn’t have an easy path to donate.
- Members who wanted to submit reports or access important documents had to sift through a long list of links and text to find what they wanted.
- Their Regional Directors had to manually enter reports into the Service History on their website, leading to wasted time, and even messy or broken web pages.
HOPE’s outdated website made it harder for them to gain recognition and support as a large-scale non-profit, and it also wasn’t doing enough to support the needs of their leadership and their growing member base.
Perhaps the most startling of all, the incredible story of the work HOPE does for the community was buried under long, repetitive paragraphs and FAQs. As an organization that has helped people affected by tragic events for over a decade, they have a rich and impactful story that needed to not simply be told, but be shown.
Goals for the Brand and Website Redesign
- Design a logo that reflects modern design style worthy of their status, while honoring the organization’s history and roots
- Create a modern, mobile-friendly website that leads with powerful imagery, showing the impact of HOPE Animal-Assisted Crisis Response teams on an emotional level.
- Incorporate clear, easy-to-find calls-to-action to guide viewers towards making donations.
- Make it easy to find and start the process of becoming part of HOPE’s specially trained volunteer base.
- Refresh the Members area to make frequently-used forms easier for Members to find.
- Create a system that makes it fast and easy for Regional Directors to add to their public Service History with just a few simple clicks.
The Redesign Process
We dove into a weeks-long process, working with HOPE stakeholders to learn more about their organizational growing pains, and look for opportunities to smooth out their processes, such as:
- Identifying and learning about their target audiences
- How new member Teams and Team Leaders are brought into the organization
- Thoroughly auditing the existing website content, and determining what content was most needed to facilitate a potential volunteer or donor’s journey
- What other processes they handled through, or in connection with, their existing website
- Identifying and gathering photo and content resources to bolster their brand story
Our design for HOPE’s new logo set the anchor for the project. We used the grounded purple-and-green color palette of their old logo, with bold, clean, and easy-to-read type and iconography to better communicate their mission.
From there, we crafted a website design that showcases the story of their comfort dogs and handlers in the field, and clearly sets the tone for the site by putting their mission front-and-center.
We also custom-built a powerful set of forms for Members, letting them easily submit their Service History reports online, and notifying Regional Directors of the new activity. From there, Regional Directors simply need to log in, review the report, and click Publish.
Now, HOPE Animal-Assisted Crisis Response has a modern website where people can easily find out how to support their cause, or even become a part of it.
- Visitors immediately see the impact of HOPE’s mission, whether they’re on mobile or desktop, and how to request a response team.
- Visitors can easily see calls-to-action on the homepage guiding them to Donate or become a Member.
- HOPE’s visual presence online now stands head-and-shoulders above other canine response team organizations across the nation
- Members can more easily find their most important and frequently-used content through a Members area menu.
- Regional Directors are saved hours of time entering Service History reports, by using their new, custom-build reporting system.
The new HOPE website included:
- Discovery and planning
- Content Strategy
- Custom Design
- Custom Web Development
- Customer segmentation
- Website training and support
Some of the Benefits of the New Website:
- Improved engagement from visitors who are new to the organization
- Time saved on administrative tasks that previously placed heavy burden on volunteers and leaders
- Fewer questions from Members looking for Member-only content and forms
- Comfort in knowing that their online presence is protected and monitored by a team of professionals
HOPE is thus far enjoying their refreshed new look, and the added ease of managing their Service History. To take a closer look at the finished product, check it out in our portfolio.
