A website is the central hub for the marketing of animal shelters and rescue organizations. An attractive, functional, and fast-loading site is one of your most valuable assets.

Assuming you already have a website that is mobile-friendly and operational, we often see many shelter websites miss a few simple, but often overlooked, items. They take a little time to tackle, but they are worth it for an improved web presence and better shelter marketing.

Get ready for some wins!

Is your branding up to date?

It’s not uncommon for a shelter organization to update their logos and taglines. That Comic Sans font from 2002 just isn’t cutting it anymore.

While you may have updated your website, make sure that your new branding carries over elsewhere. Check your social media accounts, directory listings, and graphic links from other shelter and rescue sites that promote you.

If you have a fundraising or donation processor, make sure the logo in those profiles is correct! When someone donates, they may rightfully hesitate if the offsite donation page does not match the look and feel of the site they came from.

Update the profiles and pages you control. Reach out and email updated logos to other sites that link to yours. Request politely that they update their website’s logo to your new one.

Check your site links

Links are an important aspect of the web. The more relevant links you have pointing to your website, the more traffic you can create. There are two types of links that you control.

Links from outside your site

External links are links from outside websites. Some of these links are from outside sources that you control. They include social media profiles, directory listings, donation platforms, and so on. Make sure these links are consistent.

Go to your web browser and type in your domain name. Now check the link. Is it https://www.mysheltersite.com or https://mysheltersite.com? Whichever format your link takes, with or without the “www,” make sure the profiles you control use this same link structure. It’s a minor item, but it provides consistency and prevents automatic redirection from one format to the other. This makes the site load slightly faster for visitors.

Even if you’ve changed an old domain name and it automatically redirects to a new one, make sure you change any links you can to the new domain.

Links within your site are important, too

Every link within your site content that points to another page within your site is one that you control. “Link rot” often occurs on older and larger sites. This happens when pages are deleted and links pointing to them are not redirected elsewhere.

Free tools like the Screaming Frog SEO Spider can help you find broken links on your site. It’s easy to use. Just enter your website link and click “Start.” The tool will scan your site and tell you where you have broken links.

Crush your images for faster load speed

If you’ve been uploading pictures of dogs and cats over the years, you probably have a large library of images on your site. If you haven’t been paying attention, you’ve probably been uploading images that are both larger in physical size and file size than are needed.

There’s a good chance all those unoptimized images are adding up to file bloat and contributing to a slow-loading web pages.

Free WordPress plugins like Crush and Smush perform image compression on your site’s graphics. There are both free and paid versions, but generally you can get by with the free versions.

One way to prevent a future image problem is to prepare ahead of time. When you save an image from your graphic program, either “save it for web” or reduce the quality so the file is smaller. The key is reducing the file size as much as you can without sacrificing image quality.

Remember to save a backup of your original images. You can always make images smaller with a lower resolution, but you can’t do the reverse! One way to do this is to save originals as PNG files and edited files as JPG files.

Tip: Use the correct file format for images

Use the correct file format when uploading an image or a text box to your website. The most common file formats are JPEG and PNG.

• JPEG is best for photos.
• PNG is best for illustrations, such as logos.

PNG files can have transparency, which means they will look good on any background color. JPEG files cannot have transparency, but they compress images better than PNGs do.

To make it simple: Use JPEGs for most of your site graphics. Have pictures of fuzzy kittens? Images of cute puppies? Use the JPG format.

For the most part, you want to use PNG for just your organization’s logo. They probably aren’t needed elsewhere, unless the same image is smaller in file size as a PNG than a JPEG.

Don’t forget the copy: Include a CTA on every page of your site!

This one is critical. Creating a call to action is essential for every page of your website. This is a critical component to any shelter marketing strategy.

• If it’s an animal bio or adoption listing, ask the visitor to fill out an adoption form.

• If it’s a fundraising page, ask for a donation and link to your donation form.

• On other pages, ask for volunteers or support and give them a means to do so.

You won’t get if you don’t ask. But if you’ve been involved with a non-profit for any length of time, you know that already!