Huellas World — animal shelter
A shelter that lived on Instagram gets a site of its own: a permanent page for every animal up for adoption, with its story and its care.
- Client
- Huellas World
- Year
- 2021
- Services
- Design · Custom development
The challenge
The association ran entirely from Instagram. An animal up for adoption lasted as long as it took to slide down the feed: two weeks later nobody could find it, and there was no way to send someone one dog’s page.
What I did
Custom design and development, no CMS. Every animal has a permanent page with its story, its temperament and its medical needs, plus the pages on how to help, contact and legal notices an association needs to have.
Huellas World is a shelter founded by two women who rescue animals without looking at breed, colour or size. When I arrived, all of their activity happened on Instagram.
What I found
Instagram works very well for showing animals and reaching new people, and very badly for what an adoption needs.
The problem is that a post expires. A dog that has been waiting six months for a home appears in the feed the day it is posted and disappears under whatever comes next. Somebody landing on the profile three weeks later will not find it. And if somebody asks “what about that podenco?”, there is no link to send them: you have to go and find the post and forward it.
For a small association, that is time not spent on the animals.
What I did
Custom design and development, written by hand. No content manager and no template: for five pages and two people running it, setting up a CMS would have been adding a layer to maintain in exchange for nothing.
Every animal got a permanent page of its own, with what you actually need in order to decide on an adoption and not only to be moved by it: name, age, size, breed, the story of how it arrived, how it gets on with children and with other animals, and the medical needs where there are any — including the specific treatment and what it costs, when the animal needs it for life.
That last detail is what prevents the adoption that comes back two months later.
Around the animal pages, what an association needs to have and almost never does: a page on how to help, a contact form that arrives in order instead of mixed in with direct messages, the legal notices and the cookie policy, and a sitemap.
What is not finished
The donations section was left ready with its three routes announced, but still has none of them active: the association had to register the payment methods, and that part stayed on their side.
I mention it because that’s where it stands. The project was delivered in 2021 and is not under maintenance with me.