Very nice! Our friends at STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal) have launched a new YouTube Channel to promote their programs and to aid in their ongoing quest to educate synagogues in the powers of technology.
I believe one of the tools they use to put together their web videos is the Flip camera, which I’ve mentioned here in the past.
Check it out and click Subscribe so you can receive updates from this great organization.
It’s a good probability that at least one in 20 people can’t see everything on your website. That’s because a higher number of people than you probably expected are color blind in some way. Some statistics I’ve seen say that as many as 18 percent of people have some kind of visual limitation.
Around 90 percent of the people I tell this fact to are shocked - the rest know it because they’re used to not seeing everything on a website. But what if they’re missing something terribly important, like a news alert or a call for contributions or all your website navigation?
I love the Colorblind Web Page Filter because it makes it easy to see what your website might look like through a color-deficient eyes, those that can’t see red/green or blue/yellow.
For some help choosing the right high-contrast colors for your site, try the Color Laboratory. It’s handy because it “allows you to select colors and see how they appear next to one another, and in various foreground/background combinations. It also allows you to see those colors as they might appear to color-blind users.”
Makes the incredibly important job of picking the right colors easier.
One surprising fact about our own research into how people use websites is that they use the “contact us” page a lot. They glean a lot of information from it. They go there to see where you’re located, to find directions, to meet the people who work for your organization.
What a pity that so many websites hide their contact information, especially if it’s the kind of organization with a real-world address that people might actually be visiting.
So before you do another thing today, go to your own website and challenge yourself to find your contact information. Ask yourself:
If the answer to any of these is no, you know what to do next.
The thing about weblogs is that they’re supposed to be quick and easy to put together. A theory that’s compounded by the number of people who “blog” live events. That’s to say they attend an event and bring their computer with them and provide nearly real-time feedback on what they’re seeing.
That’s of course the idea, but it takes much more work than that to actually crank up the blogging machine. That’s why I liked this posting by WebWorkerDaily about what one contributor takes with her to do live blogging. Her list of hardware includes:
The software, well, that’s another big list altogether, and fodder for a future post.
There could be a million reasons people aren’t using your site - maybe it’s summer vacation time, maybe there’s something going on in the news that’s diverting their attention, maybe you don’t even have a site yet - but I think there are three main barriers that keep people from visiting a site.
Here are those top three reasons and what you can do to remedy them.
The Problem: You don’t know your site visitors.
Which is to say, you either haven’t found your target audience, or if you have, you haven’t reflected that on your website.
The Solution: Find your target audience/market.
This Target Market Worksheet (in PDF format) from Entrepreneur is a valuable exercise for any nonprofit.
The Problem: You don’t understand your site visitors.
A big part of making sure people are using your site is understanding what they do when they get there. If you pay attention with some analytics tools, you can learn a lot about where people are going or not going when they hit your web address.
The Solution: Get hold of some analytics tools and start using them.
Some of my favorites:
The Problem: Your site visitors don’t know or understand you.
Sometimes it’s as simple as they can’t find your website. Or maybe when they get to your site, they can’t figure out what to do there.
The Solution: Start promoting your website (a topic I visit often in this blog), and start to apply some usability techniques.
During yesterday’s e-seminar Help! No One’s Using Our site (which we’re offering again, because some people who couldn’t make it asked for an encore performance), the topic of killer church websites came up.
I like to recommend church websites to nonprofits or for-profits, because some of these sites are masters of community building. Think about it: the Christian church was built on and survives on reaching large numbers of people, many of them new, and creating a community around them. They see the web as a ministry tool, and some of them have done wonderful jobs with their websites. A great lesson for any site looking to create community.
Here’s a list of my four favorites. Seen any others that you love? Tell me about them in the comments.
Mars Hill Church
http://marshillchurch.org/
A model of clean navigation. I especially love the “I am new here” button on the top left. What a great way to draw new people in - so much more engaging than “About Us.”
Revolution Church
http://www.kcrevolution.org/
If they sold websites in Urban Outfitters, they’d be stocking Revolution Church. Just beautiful, and excellent use of social media.
Fellowship Church
http://www.fellowshipchurch.com/
An enormous church that addresses a big congregation well. Very easy to see where the closest sermons are. And they’ve done a great job with new ways to address pastor Ed Young.
Saddleback Church
http://saddleback.com/
You’ve heard about this, because it’s where Barak Obama gave a speech. But it’s a nice website that gives a lot of information in an engaging way. I like the FAQ-style menu on the homepage.
UA-2525455-5