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Web design pointers for Non-Profits

The same as nearly any other website, non-profit organizations (or associations) need to worry about all the regular design elements. If you belong to one of these organizations, you’ll need to worry about the site being easy to use, friendly, having the right message, appropriate colors and fonts, and all the other stuff. In addition to all this, you also have to worry about a few other things that for-profit companies don’t need.

Is the website ready for donors?

If someone wants to give you money, shouldn’t it be easy? Have a bold, prominent “Donate” button or banner. Part two of this point is that the donation process should be very easy and safe for people. Your donation forms should pass the “Mom test”—by this I mean that you should feel comfortable letting your mother at the website and confident she’ll be able to do what she needs, without having her credit card or identity stolen, and no surprises on her monthly statement.

Can the media get what they need?

Often the largest source of publicity is the news media. If a journalist is going to write a story or even just follow up on a press release, an organization should make sure that the photos and other materials are of the best possible quality. Rather than email your logo, make it available to the media in a high resolution format on your website. Also, consider that media no longer just means the big three of television, radio and newspapers. It now also include online media such as bloggers, online only news sites and much more.

Every visitor is a potential volunteer.

Make sure people coming to the site know how to volunteer and what opportunities are available to them. Providing several ways for a volunteer to contact you makes it easier for volunteers to get in touch, so include an email address, phone number, and a web contact form if you are able.

Let everyone know the organization’s purpose

It can be easy to think that the name of the organization says it all or that visitors will already know about the organization by time they get there. This is often not the case. Explain the purpose in a short and straightforward manner.

Put the content first

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a website is for communicating information. Sure great pictures can attract attention but what the visitors do once they’ve been captured depends on your content. Is the content easy to read? Is it well written and accessible?

Be consistent with other marketing materials

Often there are different designers putting together different types of marketing materials. A graphic design is doing a poster, someone in-house is doing a brochure, the printer takes care of you business cards and the web designer gets to do the website. It’s important that all these materials merge together into a coherent look for your organization. This can be a challenge but it’s worth it. It would be a shame to lose donors or volunteers because they were confused about something like this.

Start a blog or a news section

Business has figured this out and more and more non-profits are getting on board as well. A blog is a great way to keep people informed about all sorts of things, from changes in your organization to interesting things happening in your sector. It doesn’t have to be a big deal and often on our blog the short funny posts get the most attention.

A blog or news section is also great for increasing your ranking in search engines. Frequently updated blogs do very well in search results.

Get ready for search engines

Of course there are lots of things you can do to get ready for search engines with an infinite amount of money but even if your budget is a bit tight, you can still prepare your website. First, when you’re designing the website, make sure your web designer has some experience working with search engines. He or she should understand how to lay out the code, what to do and not do and how to design to get the best search results. Also, test your search engine results yourself. Don’t use your organization’s name in your search and see how easy or hard it is to find your website.

Also, if your website uses a content management system, you might want to consider building “landing pages” for your search engine visitors. While this isn’t as easy if you don’t have a content management system, it is still possible. Landing pages are keyword rich page that show up better in search engines and when people click on the link in the search engine, the landing page helps direct them to where they should go on your websites. These landing pages don’t have to be tied into your site’s navigation if you don’t want them too.

Web browsers are everywhere

It’s true that most people still browse the internet from a computer. However, there are lots of different devices that are internet ready and you should be ready to receive traffic from them. Many people use their iPhone or their BlackBerry, especially when away from the office, to access the web. Also, there are Netbooks, cell phones and PDAs to consider. With a little forethought and perhaps a bit of extra work from the designer, your website can be ready when it gets mentioned at a conference and the audience gets out their mobile devices to check it out.

Posted by Tim on June 5, 2009 | Comments (3)

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