United Kennel Club
Improving the Registration Process, One Dog at a Time
Scope
Overview
United Kennel Club — the largest all-breed performance-dog registry in the world — needed a way for exhibitors and clubs to easily register for dog shows and events on their website.
To solve this, Vital created a standalone site strictly for event listings and registrations. The UKC Event Entry site allows users to create accounts and profiles, add individual dogs’ information, and easily register for events utilizing UKC’s Cognito forms. If a user is logged in, the event forms will auto-populate their dogs’ information to make registration simple and quick.
The new site also provides a helpful resource for exhibitors and the dog-loving general public to search events by location, date, or sport.
Establishing the Standards
The primary UKC site is loaded with information — from breed standards to exhibition rules to instructions for registering your dog as an official member of its breed. However, the events listings were buried underneath breed-specific headings in the mega nav, which created a lot of extra work for visitors searching for events in their area. Even more confusing was how exhibitors were meant to register for their events through the UKC website.
UKC needed a website specifically for club event entries and listings. So that’s what we set out to build.
The site needed to serve three audiences with three different needs:
• Clubs: To list their events
• Exhibitors: To register to participate in events
• General public: To view and search the full list of events
We worked with the UKC team to deliver a site that was clean, easy to navigate, and matched UKC’s existing branding.
Clearing the Bar
Some third-party integrations are no-brainers, while others pose a bit of a challenge. The new UKC site needed to integrate with their existing Cognito forms, through which they collect all exhibitors’ information. In addition to integrating the forms with the event pages, we also needed to ensure that the auto-population function worked correctly.
Fortunately, we succeeded by using WordPress REST API, which enables third-party applications to access the functionality of WordPress CMS. Exhibitors can now enjoy a significantly more efficient registration process!
Best In Show, Here They Come
The result of our partnership with UKC is a fully functioning site accessible to both the public and club members. Site visitors can search events using category tags (Hunting Ops, Nosework, All-Breed Sports), access full details under each event listing, and register their dogs to compete, all from one central hub.
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