Rececca at Wild Apricot has a great post this week on what makes a good nonprofit website. She's assembled some tips from the MojaLink group on LinkedIn. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Defining the purpose of a nonprofit website is key. Is it to attract donations, or is it to provide information to the individuals and groups seeking your services?
• Who will use it, why do they use it, [and] what do you want them to do on it? How can design make this easy?
• Make key information easy to find. If website visitors want to get more detailed info, give them the opportunity, but don't make every visitor wade through the details.
• Stories of success and testimonies from people who have benefited from your organization's work are a quick way to relate what you do, [but] these have to be done well. Make it good or don't do it.

The common thread in all of these is abundantly clear: Good nonprofit websites have a clear, consistent story with clear calls to action. Bad sites have a mishmash of several different ' sometimes even contradictory ' messages. The funny thing is that everyone knows about this problem. When you look at another organization's website, it's very easy to see how to clean it up. When you look at your own, it's nearly impossible.

Just over a year ago, TechSoup.org underwent a major redesign. Prior to that point, our homepage had a dozen sections with links to various departments' most recent updates. There was ample good content, but there was no overarching narrative. Our homepage was essentially a compromise. What we have now isn't perfect, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

Of course, if this were only a problem with nonprofit websites, it would be relatively easy to solve. But this is a problem with nonprofits. We're always managing multiple visions and priorities. Every person in your organization's staff probably has a different elevator pitch about your organization. Those slight variations in your organization's story can mean big differences in what people think should be highlighted in your website and marketing.

A few months ago, we hosted a webinar with Allen Gunn called What Should a Website Cost? If you didn't watch it then, watching the recording is well worth your time. In the webinar, Gunner made an excellent argument for bringing your organization's evangelists and allies into the design process. He pointed out that unlike most for-profit companies, your nonprofit has supporters who care deeply about its image and decisions. So it behooves you to include those people in the decision-making process as much as possible.

Even more importantly, those people give you a different perspective on your organization's story, a perspective that's not as hampered as yours is by individual projects and departmental politics. If you want to know how to get people excited about your organization, ask the people you've already gotten excited.

Related

• A/B Testing Is O/K
• Bad Websites, Good Fundraising
• Rethinking the Fold in Web Design
• What Story Does Your Nonprofit's Website Tell?
• Apple, Mighty Putty, and Your Nonprofit's Website

Photo: Tim Caynes, CC license

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