Online charity store brief leads to further work for Positive

Positive New Media is redesigning the website for charity Send a Cow, having already created a virtual gift shop for the organisation.

The online store launches this week and will be followed by a Christmas game and e-mail campaign. The redesigned main site goes live in December.

Send a Cow is a Christian charity promoting sustainable agriculture. The gift shop encourages donors to send aid to Africa instead of exchanging Christmas presents.

Positive was appointed after an unpaid four-way pitch.

Send a Cow wanted a fundraising tool that could engage with a variety of donors in a fun way.

The site uses a combination of Flash front-end with HTML detail and checkout pages.

Positive creative director Kate Tanner says, ‘This means if people are short on time they can jump straight into the body of the site, learn about the gifts and start shopping, but if they have time to play they can have a richer experience.’

Send a Cow had already devised characters to represent categories of gifts and Positive has used these to create themed shops for the user to browse. Alternatively, donors can view the gifts organised by cost with each price bracket having a different colour band.

The gift site will be promoted with an interactive ‘whack a mole’ game featuring one of the characters that will highlight the charity’s ‘magic muck’ compost gift.

The main site will explain Send a Cow’s work in a more serious way, but will be linked with the gift store under a single brand.