If you are developing and scaling your nonprofit then obviously you get to the point when you need to make your website better. One of the most common questions non-profit website consultants hear is “what can we do to our website so it would perform better”. Let’s try to take a closer look at this task in our article and list a few valuable tips that can really raise the level of engagement and efficiency of your professional website.
First of all the question that a professional will always ask you will be: “At whom do you target your website?” Let’s be honest, target audience is important as the website is only a tool that should be use to reach that audience, deliver a message you need and inspire them to make an action you need. Non-profit organizations are usually oriented on volunteers, donors, sponsors, and employees. Their website is an official representative office of the organization itself. Sometimes it’s even the only office. So it should be as appealing and usable as possible to deliver the message and its value to all those categories of target audience.
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Make sure that those points are mentioned as they form the core of your website and are necessary to make it efficient.
Now if you ask a professional marketer if all those things should be somehow present and given to the website users he will tell you that they are the basic skeleton that is present on each professional website and are always included in the marketing strategy for a promotion of each non-profit platform.
Everything your organization does has a reason. You may have a plan, you may have many goals but all those things come after you define and explain your mission.
Mission will be used for developing strategies for each single marketing channel that will all lead to your website. This is why the website itself should reflect that mission and make it clear to each visitor.
Now how can you implement this tip?
Your initiative is socially important so be social. Tell about people who work with you, list your team members, quote them, show their personalities. This way you will be able to connect to your visitor as they will be able to connect to your organization.
State all the important information about how your company was founded, when and why, it can be a story mixed with important details such as location, phone number, list of founders / stakeholders, etc.
Or rather help visitors visualize it by giving media materials: photos, videos, infographics, animation, original illustrations. Visual elements are very important to glue all the information you give into one beautiful image your visitors will get to understand your mission.
A website is a communication channel so use it to communicate and let others communicate with you.
Experience is important as it gives your audience a feeling they can rely on whether we are talking about donations they can make, company to work with, fund to ask for help and so on. Sharing your experience, both positive and negative, you are sharing confidence that you will not disappear, that you will complete your projects, that you will be there when your audience needs you and what can be more important for socially important projects?
When we talk about making your website oriented at your users we basically talk about its functional features, ease-of-use, quick response of interactive elements and other technical and marketing details. People do not want to stay on the website they do not understand how to use and that fails to respond to their requests.
Make sure there is a nice navigation bar available and that it appears on each page of the website except for the one where users can make a donation. Tabs should be simple and named with no more than two words, like “Our Team”, “Our Mission”, etc.
Each page and the whole website should be designed in the same branded style, contain branded elements such a colors, fonts, illustrations, infographics and so on. Your website should be associated with your brand so design and follow your brand style.
It’s a good practice to follow minimalistic design patterns when designing your website. Too many elements will distract its visitors from the most important info and will rather make them forget about what they were doing there.
So that the visitors would complete an action you need you should guide them to it. In order to do it correctly you design the website only after you have completed a user’s road map and the layout of each page and position of each element is chosen according to that roadmap. Try to think about the path your visitors should follow to put elements in the right order and finally take them to the main point.
60+ percent of all internet users go online from their smartphone and other mobile devices. Now it goes for granted for each modern website to be mobile friendly and to keep in mind that the visitors will load it from all different kind of devices, including mobile ones.
There is no difference in the engagement approach for mobile and desktop visitors but you should still keep in mind few things:
It is simply uncomfortable to scroll a page horizontally to see what’s next and what’s featured.
Use big and clear fonts as they are aimed at delivering messages that should be easily read by users even if they are reading it on a very small screen.
Original and creative design elements are best experienced when using the desktop version of the website. Mobile users will rather get frustrated with complicated elements.
Smart and professional approach to the design and completion of your nonprofit’s website will turn it into a powerful tool you will enjoy using. And our tips will help you do it in an easy and clear way!
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