While reading my dailies, I came across a fabulous article by Cameron Chapman on Smashing Magazine. Its focus was “Best Practices for Non-profit Website Design.”
And while I have no arguments about how helpful and resourceful this article is with regard to Non-profit Website Design, I do believe these best practices can be repurposed for nearly any organization looking to build a new Web site or update their current one.
A listing of Best Practices for Non-Profit Web sites are as follows:
- Make your site donor-friendly
- Make Your Site Media-Friendly
- Make Your Site Volunteer-Friendly
- Make Sure Your Organization’s Purpose is Immediately Apparent
- Make Sure Your Content Takes Center Stage
- Make Sure Your Website is Consistent with Your Other Promotional Materials
- Know Your Site’s Purpose Up Front
- Include a News Section or Blog
Find a breakdown for organizations that are not non-profit, on how to utilize these same Website best practices for your own company below.
Read the original and full article here.
If YOU ARE FOR-PROFIT organization, here are some Web site Key Takeaways and Thoughts from this article that can be utilized for your company:
- Make your site donor-friendly
- Make Sure Your Organization’s Purpose is Immediately Apparent and Know Your Site’s Purpose Upfront
- Make Sure Your Content Takes Center Stage
- Make Sure Your Website is Consistent with Your Other Promotional Materials
- Include a News Section or Blog
Whether you are collecting donations, selling a product or providing information your site needs to be easy to navigate and checkout. The checkout process can be collecting donations, moving consumers through an actual purchase process, or requiring them to sign up for a webinar, or fill out information to download a whitepaper – you need to make it easy and requiring too many steps and requesting unnecessary information can mean losing that potential customer.
If visitors cannot figure out the purpose of your company or what you offer they cannot be turned into prospective customers. A cute logo and clever tagline won’t cut it. Make sure to include clear precise copy on all pages that informs visitors of what you offer, how to get more information and how it all works.
Content does not equal copy. Content refers to copy, videos, blogs, Flash elements, images, and other types of media. Consider the types of audiences coming to your site and the best forms of content to include on your site that appeal to many types of personas. From researcher to purchaser, focus on the main types of personas interested in your product or service offering and appeal to their purchase process. What key pieces of information need to be present to get them to the desired action (e.g. requesting more information, signing up for a trial or demo, checking out). Different pieces of content appeal to different users and finding the right mix of content while balancing design and creating clear goal/conversion paths is no small challenge. Measure and test everything.
Take a hard and fast look at all on and offline materials. Cost efficiencies can be saved across the board by picking standard sizes, having image libraries, and all departments working from the same pool of resources. This ensures consistency across the board and that is the number one rule – consistency makes for success. Your brand identity will also be salvaged. In addition, make sure someone is assigned to managing your Web site and that they are made aware of all marketing initiatives both on and offline. There is nothing worse than having a press release sent out over the Internet and then visiting the actual company Web site for more information and there is little to no information on the product or service that was promoted, let alone the press releases hasn’t even been posted to the company site. You miss out on great search engine visibility opportunities by missing on such a simple web update.
Don’t miss out on opportunities to become an authority in your area. You don’t always have to be promoting your products or services, think inside your box but with regard to end-user. What problems do they encounter that your product or service might help solve? Blogs and News Sections are opportunities to take advantage of ongoing search engine visibility as well as deliver valuable and relevant information to your audiences. They keep your site current and fresh and provide valuable insight into your companies work ethic and level of service.
photo credit: cogdogblog
Interesting, I’ve been reading a lot about this lately.
We’re a group of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community. Your web site offered us with useful info to work on. You have done a formidable process and our whole neighborhood will be grateful to you.