Overview
Without know much of anything about raising a dog, I walked into the shelter and impulsively adopted Duke -- the cutest rescue who had been found in the woods. After finding out how skittish and defensive Duke became while in public, I quickly realized that I needed to enlist the help of a local trainer. I did some Googling and found Allegiance Canine, a balanced, dog training business in Memphis, TN. After seeing Duke's initial progress (and realizing how much training would be required to keep progressing), I pitched a website redesign for Allegiance in exchange for long-term training/daycare credit.
Why did I want to redesign their website?
As with many small business owners, Jacque, the owner of Allegiance Canine wears a thousand hats, which meant that maintaining the website wasn't always a high priority. The site was outdated, non-responsive, and extremely text-heavy which made it hard to find key bits of information to help the decision-making process. Dog training is not cheap and there is no guarantee that it will work, so potential clients have to really trust the trainer enough to fork over their hard-earned money. I didn't want Jacque to lose clients with a bad web experience, so I wanted to bring attention to the content that people in my shoes needed to know.
Target Audience
The primary audiences are "dog people" looking for obedience training, private sessions to correct problem behaviors, and skills training for personal protection work. Some are excited to set a foundation with their new dog, some are seasoned owners looking to push their working breeds to their limits....and some (like myself) are desperately trying to get help with their “aggressive”, nervous, and/or destructive dogs.
My Role
For this project, I handled the website build including migration from the old server, graphics and copywriting for the new site and SEO optimization to let people know what to expect if they came across us on Google.
Constraints
Maintaining the website should be easy for Jacque to make quick updates if needed, so we moved from his existing Wordpress to Squarespace. That way, he wouldn't have to worry as much about the technical details that can make or break a website (auto updates, clean templates and built-in responsiveness). This was also a small scale project, meaning that I wanted to avoid bringing in outside help unless the need arose.
Process
My goal was to visually communicate the feeling and education I got when visiting the facility. Allegiance has a casual family feel, but its definitely WORK so I stuck with the strong colors and bold typefaces. I also sought to elevate Jacque's point that dog training is less about training the dog, and more about building a plan for dogs and their humans to work together. Allegiance Canine has a great social media presence, so I wanted to play off of that feel and add more pictures and videos to the website. I had Jacque share all of the photos and videos that he could find to compliment the site's content.
Fortunately, the old website had a ton of copy to reference, so my first job involved reworking digestible bullet points from the old site, and prioritizing the key content that people would be looking for on the new site. Next, I did a low-fi wireframe where I moved all the content into sections that would make more sense (for example, moving their origin story from the front page to the about page). The low-fi reference was workable enough to build the site directly into the Squarespace platform, so I save a little time by skipping hi-fidelity mockups.
Last, I wanted to make sure that the website had clear CTA's that would pull them through the sales funnel. Prior to the refresh, if clients were interested, they would have to call or copy/paste Jacque's email to reach out. I made sure to incorporate service-specific interest forms that clients could fill out and send without leaving the site. Not only did this make it easier to convert interested clients, the customized forms help with assessing demand for services.
Outcomes
Inquiries immediately went up after the launch of the new site! In six months, 124 service inquires have been sent directly through the site to compliment direct emails, inquiries by phone and referrals clients. There was less text on the new site, but people spent more time exploring the information, reading the testimonials and watching the embedded videos. My theory is that when it comes to services, if people can see what they are paying for, they are more likely to buy.
lessons
I've designed web components before, but this was the first website that I built for someone outside of myself. I learned a lot about structure, realistic timeframes and asset management and presenting a case for design changes. I also learned that my vision often outpaces my capabilities (I'm creative AF!). When I move into building my own creative teams, I'd have no problem assembling and leading a team of designers, UX/UI folks, copywriters and developers who are way more skilled than I am to build amazing experiences.
What's next?
Integrating a scheduling tool to book time with specific trainers, adding a weekly event calendar and an online payment system. If I had a magic wand, my looong term goal would be building an app where clients can track the progress of their dog's training, send messages, and receive goals set by their trainers