People don’t process information like they did ten years ago, or even last year for that matter. Social media, the internet, and especially the recent advances in mobile technology have virtually obscured every other way people get news and useful information. If someone learns something, chances are very good they first heard of it through social media or from a website. Embrace this change to help boost your nonprofit organization marketing and reach.
Information flows 24/7 and this constant news cycle is overwhelming to most people. There are nearly a billion websites on the internet. The web has become the primary means of communication today, and it’s often the first impression and most likely means by which people discover you. There’s a lot of competition.
If your nonprofit’s website or mobile website is barely functional, how in the world can you expect people to learn about your nonprofit organization, let alone spend a little time to learn about your mission or donate a few bucks to your cause. You want to stand out!
Make it easy for people to find your website and read the quality content you’re offering. Make it easy for them to share this info with their friends and get involved. Make it easy to donate or volunteer. Yes, it’s important to be setup properly. Make the technology work for you, don’t get worked by it.
By realizing the need to differentiate and then taking the steps to make sure you’ve got your fundamental best practices covered, you can optimize your marketing to better present your message to a much wider audience and engage more people more consistently.
Yes, it all starts with your website and social media. You may need to completely revamp your website (especially to accommodate mobile devices), or you may be able to adjust your current design, but you can be certain, the new web isn’t what it used to be.
The following ten tips will highlight many of the most important best practices for modern web development and the marketing your nonprofit organization. Stick to the fundamentals and keep it simple. Focus on quality content, and delivering your message to people in an easy and effective way.
* Be warned, I like the “Keep It Simple” strategy…
And I suspect if I tell you enough times, you will.
Ten Best Practices for Nonprofit Organization Websites
1) Determine Your Top-Level Pages — Look at your website’s sitemap (the list of all the pages on your website). Most websites, whether for business or nonprofit has a half-dozen or so pages that are most important. These pages are foundational pages, and except for news feeds or featured content, will probably not change much, unless something about your organization changes significantly. Your nonprofit likely has an about us page, products or services page, testimonials or reviews page, donate or volunteer page (sometimes both), as well as a contact page.
Perhaps you have another top-level page, such as events, or news, or something along those lines. Take these pages, and make sure your content is perfect, free of any typos, and crystal clear about what it’s telling the viewer. And most importantly, keep it simple. You don’t have to include every bit of info about your nonprofit on every top-level page, just what the page is about.
2) Make Your Home Page Stand Out —The home page is also technically called the index page, because this should be the place where someone can find a quick link to anything else on the website. Most modern website home pages have a large, powerful image and links to the various top-level pages.
Keep it simple, and be brief. Don’t write ten paragraphs on the home page. Visitors should be able to grasp the basic concept or mission of your nonprofit in less than three seconds. Featured images and content are great, often in a slideshow directing them to new and exciting things your organization is doing.
Of course, add easy to find links to your various top-level pages. Often this navigation is included toward the top of the page and near the bottom. Be sure to add a link to each main page in the home page content.
And finally, make sure your home page makes specific and obvious call-to-actions.
3) Keep Your Design and Structure Consistent — Most every page on your site, including all the top level and secondary pages, along with all the content pages should utilize a very similar if not identical design so that the navigation, layout, and design scheme is consistent throughout your website.
If you have navigation links in your header at the top of each page, keep those links on all pages. Same for the footer. Repetition is crucial. People already expect this consistency from good websites, and by keeping it easy to navigate, your website visitors are more likely to spend more time on your website as well as be able to find exactly what it is they are looking for on your site.
4) Don’t Overwhelm Your Pages and Your Viewers — Outdated websites are notorious for containing four or five columns to display their content. While this might work for a magazine or newspaper, it can make your website look extremely busy. Many people will be overwhelmed by all this content and end up not even trying to absorb what you are presenting.
You can still provide thousands of pages of content, but you don’t have to list every single article and blurb and image on your top-level pages. Keep it simple. Stick to one or two columns and instead of including the whole enchilada, present quick blurbs and snippets as teasers for your viewers to continue on to the full page of content.
5) Format Site Content Text For Ease of Reading — There is a big difference to reading an article on a computer monitor versus a book or magazine. Mobile devices are different too. Keep it simple. While there’s nothing wrong with lots of text content, just make sure you’re sticking to general presentation best practices so that your site visitors can read your content without struggle.
- Make sure your font is large enough to read on various devices.
- Keep the length of each line of text to 10-15 words.
- Limit many paragraphs to 3-5 sentences.
- Use bold and other heading tags for headlines.
- Use quick bullet points and numbered lists.
- Call-out text with block quotes or italics or links.
- Consider chopping seriously long pages into multiple pages or creating a PDF for download.
Finally, don’t be afraid of white space, because it helps balance out your page and make it easier to read.
6) Write Unique Page and Image Titles, Descriptions, and Keyword Tags — Over the past dozen years, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialists have used and abused meta tags beyond belief, and thus forced Google and search engines to tighten up their relevancy algorithms so that “SEO Spammers” aren’t getting ranked for crappy content.
This is a good thing, especially for people looking for quality content. Keep it simple and ensure your pages receive the quality ranking they deserve by including unique, descriptive titles, descriptions, and keywords.
Your home page title should in most case be just your organization name, and possibly your motto or tagline. The home page description should be kept short and sweet, with very succinct description of your nonprofit organization. Secondary pages and content pages should all have unique titles and descriptions.
Keywords in the meta data are not so important, and are barely even noticed by Google, but many other search engines still utilize these keywords. It’s good practice to include 4-5 of the top keywords or keyword phrases in your meta tags, and then make sure your text content includes those words too.
Finally, don’t forget to add titles and alt tags to every image on your site using quality keywords and phrases. Don’t overdo it. When it comes to unique titles, descriptions, and keywords, a little goes a long way.
7) Subscribe or Sign Up Functionality — List marketing is arguably, probably, the most effective way to keep in touch with your readership. People visiting your website should have the option to sign up for more content. This should be an option on at least the home page, but better yet, every page. Keep it simple. All they need to do is enter their email and click a button or link to confirm.
While effective eNewsletter and list marketing is beyond the scope of this article, realize that this is something you simply must do. Sending out links to your news, event, and good quality content will entice your readers to become more active part in your nonprofit’s mission, even if all they do is visit your website. Be consistent and send out only one or two quick updates a month, make it relevant, and make it good, in return your readership will appreciate it.
8) Include Social Media and Sharing Options — Empower your readership to share your content and help spread the word about your nonprofit. Keep it simple. There are literally millions of free social media icons already designed and ready for you to add to your website, along with all kinds of plugins and codes to get them to work properly.
Keep in mind that you are looking for people to share your content, not simply clicking a button to leave your website. For example, you can have people click a facebook link to like your page, like your brand, like your content, or share your content with others. Choose the type of button based on what you’d like them to do. Most of the time, it is for them to share that content or information with others.
Also keep in mind that mobile web users are twice as likely to share content with friends than desktop web users. And, it is fairly obvious that certain social media sites will more heavily “weight” items shared via mobile, as that type of content is often more relevant, especially photos, videos, and location-based info.
9) Make It Easy For Others to Donate — Whether you are looking for money donations, or time and effort donations, you should have a large, prominent “Donate Now” or “Sign Up to Volunteer” button featured on your home page and virtually every other page, probably near the top and near the bottom and right in the middle too. Match your button to your website design styles, and remember that online donors are very often impulsive.
Make sure that your Donate Now button links directly to the page asking for the amount of their donation. Sure, you can very, very quickly state how their donation will help the nonprofit organization, but your donate button should not be cluttered with all kinds of general “Support Us” information.
Take them to a second page for their contact information and credit card details. Splitting the donation process into multiple quick easy steps has been shown to be more effective on both desktop and mobile donation pages. Avoid as much typing, especially on the mobile page. And yep, you guessed it… Keep it simple. Make the donation process easy!
10) Blog and More Blog and Blog Some More — Once your website is launched and functional, you need to frequently and consistently add quality content to your website that compels your readership to visit again and again. Build it and they will come. Post events, news, features, videos, photos, people, you name it. There is always something going on, even not so good news. Tell people about it. Help them care!
And yep, keep it simple. The WordPress CMS (Content Management System) is the easiest and most popular blogging system available. A good web developer can get a WordPress blog operational on your website in mere minutes, and custom designed to match your overall web style in mere hours.
The problem with WordPress is that because it is designed for simplicity on the user end, the back end can be quite complicated. Too many widgets and plugins will significantly slow down your WordPress, which is not a good idea for search engines or for your site visitors.
Any heavy, slow-loading page will significantly increase your “Bounce Rate” — most people simply will not wait for your site to load. You really want it to load in less than three seconds. Sure thing, keep it simple. Build your top-level pages easy, clean HTML5 with CSS3 Style Sheets matched with even more streamlined mobile pages for top-level info. Then for the big blog content, it is a good idea to compartmentalize your blog into its own directory (ie YourNonprofitWebsite.org/blog) and minimize the number of plugins and widgets.
When you’re all set up to blog, you can write and write and write to your heart’s content. The more you do it, the better you’ll become at providing your audience what they want, and keep them continually and increasingly involved.
By utilizing these Best Practices for Nonprofit Organization websites, you will be able to help your nonprofit improve your marketing, improve your reach, and improve your community involvement. By remembering to focus on keeping it simple for you and your readers, you will greatly improve the overall user experience of those visiting your website. And most importantly, you’ll make it easier for people to find your site, learn your message, get active in your cause, donate, volunteer, and bring along their friends too.
Keep doing good.
Five More Articles for Nonprofit Website Tips & Inspiration
- 40+ Inspirational Nonprofit Websites
- 38 Brilliant Non-Profit Websites
- 9 Outstanding Mobile Websites
- Best NonProfit Websites
- Most Charities Fail at Online Fundraising
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