Web design

Bad news, not-for-profit friends. When it comes to your website (despite all our advice), what donors want and what you're giving them still aren't quite matching up.

Two of the items users most want to see upfront on a not-for-profit website are your goals and how you use donation dollars. In other words, potential donors want to know what you're trying to do and how you spend your money. And sadly, most nonprofits aren't doing a great job sharing this vital information.

Over the past few years, Nyman Ink has switched its focus from print to web design. We still do plenty of print and are still major advocates of print media, but more clients seem to come to us with digital requests than print requests, and we've adapted to accommodate them (and you).

And with the wonderful world of websites, comes the many failings of website design. Well, not failings, per say, but rather, difficulties.

Navigation blindness is just one of those difficulties.

I've probably visited more than 100 different not-for-profit websites in the past year. (In fact, that's a modest estimate.) As part of my job, I'm online every day, surfing around to see what not-for-profits are doing well and not-so-well with their online marketing and communications products.

Considering the vast range of not-for-profits and charities out there, it's not surprising that I've seen a vast range of website styles. And also unsurprisingly, a vast range of website design mistakes.

I've written about this before. In particular, I've talked about the fact that your homepage might be annoying people. I've also written about some of the most common mistakes I've seen on not-for-profit websites in general, but today, I wanted to focus on something much more specific: the not-for-profit homepage and the absolute basics of what it SHOULD contain. Read on and then compare your not-for-profit homepage design to see if it measures up.

I recently received an invitation to a birthday party that requested no gifts. For me, that meant making a donation in the birthday boy’s honour.

Normally I do my best to discern the honoree’s favourite charity, but sometimes I just use my best judgement. Because there are so many charities and not-for-profits out there (see Jen's recent post about being overwhelmed), my choices are endless. Thus, if I become frustrated with the donation method of one charity, I can easily move on to the next.

And that's why donation page design is important.

I came across an interesting white paper a while back and it’s been on my mind ever since. Entitled “Time to Go Mobile: How Leading Non-Profits Are Engaging Constituents on Mobile Devices,” it was published by ASI (Advanced Solutions International), “the largest privately owned software vendor serving member and donor-based non-profits.”

Our Editorial Director, Bonnie Jackson, had an interesting experience with her smart phone last week. She was trying to visit the website of one of her favourite organizations in order to show a friend some of its multi-media content (specifically, a video). The site recognized that she was accessing it from her smart phone and routed her to the mobile site — a paired down version of the main site that didn’t include any multi-media content.

In the last couple of months, we’ve done a fair amount of blogging on the subject of not-for-profit (NFP) websites and web design. We’ve talked about the mistakes in your not-for-profit blog, the fact that you might have an annoying homepage and what your website (as a whole) might be doing wrong.

Looking back, it all sounds a little negative, doesn’t it?

With that in mind, I thought it might be time to write about some best practices for non-profit websites (that is to say, your websites). For the moment, let’s forget what you may be doing wrong and focus on what you could be doing right.

Take your cue from this short list of the most important features of successful non-profit sites. The list features the three key things the most well-designed non-profit sites do (that you should do too).

Over the course of the weekend, I spent a lot of time surfing the web, doing research. And along the way, I came across many truly awful websites. Not awful as in, bad colours/bad design, but awful as in annoying. Annoying enough to make me surf away, never to return. And it got me thinking…

When a website works well, I don’t even register it. I just use the site. I find what I’m looking for quickly, I click around, exploring. The site and I exist so harmoniously, I don’t even think about it. But when a site doesn’t work, when it takes too long to find what I’m looking for, when I’m assaulted by ads, or preaching, or huge blocks of sales-pitch-filled text, I notice. I become irritated. And I surf off in another direction. Immediately.

Not-for-profits, take note, because if you’re looking to keep people invested, to convert visits to donations, or surfers to volunteers, you’ve got to commit to improving your website. Right now, you may be doing all sort of annoying things on your homepage without even knowing it. The person who made your site may even have recommended these things, which is unfortunate, but common.

Here are a few of the recurring problems I noticed this weekend:

Say you’ve decided to create a landing page. Where do you start? First things first: you need copy. But what should you write?

Everyone has these questions. You’re not alone.

Let’s start by explaining exactly what we mean by a “landing page.” (We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating).