Client’s Corner: Golden Rescue

Golden Rescue, one of Canada’s largest single-breed dog rescue groups, is a non-profit registered charitable organization. Run entirely by volunteers, they work hard to ensure that every Golden brought into the program is placed with a safe and loving forever family. Since 1990, they have found homes for surrendered, abandoned, unwanted or displaced Golden Retrievers.

Golden Rescue has no paid staff, no offices, and no expensive administrative expenses. They instead have over 500 dedicated volunteers throughout Ontario, Quebec and beyond working to ensure every Golden in their care gets a second chance. All of their fundraising goes to helping Goldens, with approximately 80% of those funds used for vet care and behavioural training.

When Golden Rescue approached Generator Design to create a new website, we were happy to lend a paw.

After researching existing websites to gain inspiration, we created a functional sitemap to organize their existing information and data in a clean and user friendly way. Once the sitemap was complete we moved along to creating a wireframe. This step was important, allowing for rough templating of the general flow of the site. A wireframe was made for the home page, general pages and the golden sections.

We envisioned a design that balanced playful with professional, using white space contrasted with fun patterns and photos. We kept in mind that one of the biggest draws to the site would be the photographs of golden retrievers and therefore allotted plenty of room to feature them.

After design approval, we moved forward with development. Taking the static design, we created a custom WordPress theme that included special areas for the golden retrievers, events and affiliates. During development we made sure that the client was able to access information and update everything from the dashboard. In the end, we created a site from the ground up, tailored to the user’s experience both frontend and backend.

Development of the site also included a mobile responsive version. The last step to development was to check the site for both mobile and browser friendliness and accessibility. We tested the website on multiple browsers, using screen readers or keyboard only input to ensure it could be used by everyone. Once development was complete we helped the client migrate their existing website content over to the new site. We made sure to arrange and style the site so that the visitors had an enjoyable and easy experience using the site.

We had a great time creating such a fun and playful website. Learn more about Golden Rescue and see the finished project here.