Mobile Experience Tips for Animal Welfare Organizations

For animal welfare organizations, connecting animals with their forever homes is at the heart of everything you do. But a critical disconnect might be costing you adoptions. Almost two-thirds of the people browsing your adoptable pets are doing it on their smartphones. They’re trying to complete adoption applications and make donations with them too.

That means if your website isn’t optimized for these mobile humans, you’re likely experiencing lower adoption rates for your animal residents—not because of a lack of interest but because of technical barriers that stand between pets and potential families.

The Real Cost of Poor Mobile Experiences

When your website doesn’t perform well on mobile devices, the impact extends beyond inconvenience. It directly affects your organization’s ability to fulfill its mission in several measurable ways.

• Adoption opportunities slip away. Mobile-responsive websites lead to higher engagement and conversion rates, but many animal welfare organizations haven’t optimized their digital experience. The heart-breaking result is potential adopters can’t easily browse animal profiles, view photos, or complete applications on their phones. For every non-responsive website, a potential perfect match is lost.
• Donation revenue decreases. Mobile-responsive sites increase the likelihood of donations by 34%, which, for many animal welfare organizations, represents thousands of dollars in potential funding, and forever families, annually.
• Volunteer recruitment suffers. With 79% of smartphone users making purchases on their devices, today’s volunteers expect the same kind of convenience when offering their time. More than 67% of site visitors will abandon forms entirely if they come across complications. And poor mobile responsiveness is usually to blame.
• Your brand perception weakens. When users encounter difficulties on your mobile site, they don’t blame their devices, they blame you. Negative experiences with your organization can impact everything from social media sharing to word-of-mouth recommendations.

Key Mobile Experience Improvements

1. Mobile-Optimized Animal Profiles and Search

When someone sees Bella the three-legged pitbull mix or Oliver the senior cat with one eye, you have mere seconds to help them look beyond the special needs to see the loving companion waiting underneath. Making your adoptable animals shine on mobile devices is just the beginning of creating that emotional connection.

• Implement responsive image galleries that automatically resize for any screen while maintaining photo quality. High-quality, quickly-loading images that capture personality can be the difference between scrolling past and falling in love.
• Create touch-friendly filtering options that make it easy for users to narrow their search based on animal type, age, size, and temperament. Large, tappable filter buttons improve the user experience dramatically compared to tiny checkboxes.
• Display critical information first on mobile screens, making sure the most important details about each animal (personality, special needs, adoption status) appear before users need to scroll extensively.
• Design search functionality specifically for mobile users, with large search fields, predictive text, and voice search options. This helps potential adopters quickly find specific types of animals that match their lifestyle.

2. Streamlining the Adoption Application Process

We understand that adopting a pet isn’t the same as, say, buying sneakers on Zappos. Taking care of a dog for the next decade is a huge commitment. But the moment someone decides, “This is the pet I want to bring home” is not the time for your clunky application form on a tiny screen to time out. That may mean the difference between a pet spending another night at the shelter or going home to a warm bed and belly rubs.

Your adoption screening process can still be thorough while being mobile-friendly. Consider these approaches:

• Break lengthy applications into logical steps that are easier to complete on mobile devices. Progress indicators help applicants understand how much they’ve completed and how much remains.
• Implement form-saving functionality that allows users to save their progress and return later, particularly important for longer applications that require thoughtful responses.
• Minimize text entry requirements by using mobile-friendly selection tools like dropdowns, toggles, and pre-populated options whenever possible instead of free-text fields, which are trickier on mobile keyboards.
• Provide clear error feedback that helps applicants correct mistakes without frustration. Position error messages next to the relevant fields rather than at the top or bottom of forms.

3. Mobile-Friendly Donation Forms

Your mobile donation experience isn’t just a transaction; it’s a transformation. Every simple tap brings a neglected animal closer to medical care, a scared animal closer to rehabilitation, a homeless animal closer to a warm bed. When someone feels moved by a story you’ve shared, their impulse to help should be met with an effortless way to act on that compassion.

• Create single-screen donation forms. The most effective mobile donation forms can be completed in 1-2 screens, leading to higher fundraising conversions.
• Offer digital wallet payment options. Reduce friction and abandonment rates with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal to eliminate the need to enter credit card details on mobile devices.
• Implement suggested donation amounts. Including suggested donation amounts on your giving page can increase average donation dollars. Make amounts easy to select with one tap, while still providing the option for custom amounts.
• Design compelling donation confirmation pages. Sharing is caring! Encourage sharing on social media so your reach will extend to the donor’s network. Don’t be shy about showing the impact of contributions!

4. Optimizing Volunteer Sign-Ups

You love your volunteers. And you probably need more of them. Mobile optimization can help you attract them.

• Create simplified volunteer interest forms that collect only essential information initially. You can follow up with more detailed questionnaires after establishing initial contact.
• Develop mobile-friendly volunteer calendars that make it easy to view opportunities and sign up for shifts directly from a smartphone.
• Implement text message reminders for upcoming volunteer commitments, which have significantly higher open rates than emails.
• Design volunteer orientation materials that are accessible and readable on mobile devices, allowing new volunteers to prepare from anywhere.

Success Stories

By partnering with several animal welfare organizations over the years, we’ve seen the real-world impact of thoughtful mobile experiences.

Animal Welfare League of Arlington (AWLA)

The Animal Welfare League of Arlington (AWLA) website integrates real-time adoptable pet listings with Petango and secure on-site donations with Blackbaud in a fully responsive layout that serves AWLA’s significant mobile user base.

The streamlined pet browsing experience has directly contributed to increased adoptions, while the integrated donation system has significantly boosted their fundraising capabilities.

(Fun fact! One of our project managers fell in love with and adopted their cat, Goose, from AWLA, experiencing the adoption journey we help organizations optimize every day!)

Read the Full Case Study

Friends of Homeless Animals (FOHA)

Through a strategic redesign focused on mobile optimization, the Friends of Homeless Animals (FOHA) achieved impressive results, including increased adoption application completion rates, growth in mobile donations, improved volunteer engagement, and greater staff efficiency.

The organization now has a more modern, updated site that’s easy to update and easier for users to navigate on any device. Long-term success metrics include increased site traffic, better search rankings, donation growth exceeding 20%, and significantly higher volunteer engagement.

American Humane Hero Dog Awards

While not focused on adoptions directly, the American Humane Society’s annual Hero Dog Awards program website implemented a mobile-first approach, creating a system that could handle massive traffic surges even at peak voting times.

The new site allowed users to easily filter and narrow down hundreds of finalists each year, with full voting functionality accessible from mobile devices even with spotty cell reception. This transformation has helped thousands of heroic dogs receive recognition and support.

Read the Full Case Study

Take the Next Step in Your Mobile Optimization Journey

Ready to get more animals into homes? You don’t need a massive website overhaul to start seeing results. Here are a few quick wins you can tackle this week:

1. Audit your current mobile experience by asking volunteers to complete an adoption application on their smartphones and note frustration points. A free tool like this is perfect for the task.
2. Test your website loading speed using free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify performance issues that may be driving visitors away.
3. Simplify your most critical forms by removing unnecessary fields and ensuring they’re easy to complete on small screens.
4. Review your animal photos and listings from a mobile perspective by walking through the actual experience on a smartphone. A few things to try:
   1. Swiping between photos of an adoptable pet
   2. Filtering animals by size or temperament
   3. Navigating from the gallery to individual profiles
   4. Checking if images load quickly
   5. Resizing properly on smaller screens

Every mobile improvement means more than just better metrics. It represents real animals with wagging tails and purring motors who are waiting for their chance. When you remove the digital barriers between animals and the humans who want to help them, you’re not just optimizing a website—you’re creating connections that lead to forever homes.

We’re here to help.

If you’d like guidance on where to focus your efforts, consider requesting a free mobile assessment from the humans at Yoko Co. We understand the unique needs of animal welfare organizations. The insights gained can help you prioritize improvements that directly support your mission to find more loving homes for the animals in your care.

Let’s Help More Animals, Together