Friendly Web Tools Blog

This Halloween I might dress as the economy. I can’t think of any scarier. You’re right to be scared too, especially if you’re a nonprofit and beholden to funders, because you’ve got to make the case why you need a good website.

Hold on. Reality check: you aren’t thinking of cutting funding for your own website, are you? That would be a grave mistake. Websites are not only the public face of your organization, but the best tool you have to information and create a community on a budget.

Now that we’ve got that straight, let’s look at the top 10 things your website should have so that it gives you a good return on your investment. And just hanging in there won’t cut it. People will stop visiting your site - and thinking about your organization - if they don’t see some worthwhile action happening online. This is one of those times you need to invest.

In no particular order (because they’re all important), here are 10 things your website simply must have and that will wind up saving you money.

1. Contact form. You can always post your e-mail address on your website, but be prepared to be overrun with spam. Avoid this by putting a contact form on your site to make it easy for your website visitors to reach you and to avoid spammers at the same time. You might also think of adding a Captcha to your form.

2. A place for feedback. This could be a contact form, but better yet, let your website visitors leave comments. This might be on your blog, on news postings or on articles. You can also allow ratings, which lets people cast their vote.

3. Consistent navigation. Make sure people know where to go on your site by putting your navigation in the same place everywhere.

4. Regularly updated information. Freshness keeps people coming back. At the very least, make sure you’re cycling through new content on the homepage on a weekly basis. Blogs and Twitter accounts make this an even easier way to create an online community through content.

5. Analytics. Try a tool such as Clicky or Google Analytics to find out when people are coming to your site, where they’re from and a whole load of other stuff. Analytics tools are way more powerful than a counter.

6. Donate now button. If you’re a nonprofit that accepts donations from a constituency, make it clear and easy.

7. Address front and center. A street address. With a phone number. Do it.

8. Search tool - for your site, not someone else’s. A search box will help your visitors find exactly what they need. But don’t make the mistake of putting a Google search box or a search tool from another site on yours. You just make it easier for people to leave.

9. Really good URLs. This starts with your web address (I know nonprofits are swimming in alphabet soup, but don’t make everyone else guess your acronym). Then make sure you have Clean URLs installed throughout.

10. A CMS. A content management system will make these things a bajillion times easier to do if you have a publishing system in place. Here’s how we do it.

We just hosted a webinar with some friends of ours at Dinkum Interactive about search engine optimization. It was great and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback so far.

One of the biggest lessons we addressed during the presentation was the importance of looking beyond just the technology and just the marketing when it comes to coaxing people to find you on the Internet. It’s much more than having the right tools or writing the right copy. So-called search engine optimization is a full-on effort that ensures that you’re always promoting your company and making sure that people are always learning about you.

But there are a few things you can do to help coax search engines to move you up their web pages. One is clean URLs.

Every page on your website has its own address, or URL. Search engines, as do people, like to see these addresses when they make sense. So they’ll avoid cataloging those pages with such addresses as

http://www.talance.com/aspweb/ur123/do/results?firsttime=y&
set=search&referer=&edition=&sortResultsBy=TopicRelevance
=9644205E04CF9DBF1B850C0219204572_1188832070933&
urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B112707510

And prefer addresses that give a clear indication of the information on the page, such as:

http://www.talance.com/about-us

This can be done automatically if your CMS (content management system) has clean URLs installed. Then it will read the page’s title and make that the URL, rather than a mechanical string.
Try it out, and see if suddenly more people are able to find you online.

I’m always telling you that you should be using a web content management system (CMS), but what does everyone else think? A few good ways to find out how and why other organizations are using CMSs is to check out these useful surveys.

Here are some nice ones from …

UC Davis

Helpful take-aways:

• Over 60% of respondents are in institutions currently using a Web CMS
• Institutions were more likely to employ open source or custom-developed solutions over proprietary/commercial systems
• Most instances of Web CMS systems are small, centralized deployments of under 40 sites and 40 or fewer total users
• Over 75% of Web CMS adopters provide formal training to users
• Most Web CMS adopters would choose the same system if they had to do so again
• Overall, there were no clear-cut “market leaders” in the broad field of Web CMS solutions identified by the higher ed institutions that responded to the survey. However, Plone and Drupal - both open source solutions - are in relatively heavy use.

CMS Web Report from CMS Watch

The full version is almost $1000, but you can see a free excerpt.

Helpful take-aways:

• Most Web CMS customers face a greater risk of over-buying than under-buying

What CMS are you using? Take our survey - it’ll take five seconds. Promise.

Now’s your chance to introduce yourself: two events are coming up where I’ll be making presentations online.

One is a show and tell event about our online learning services, which you can catch on the Nonprofit Technology Network (N-TEN), a good network you should get to know anyway.

The other is a web primer on what a CMS (content management system) is, why it matters and how to budget for a new one:

Both are free and open to the public, so sign up, pass the word and say hi.

If you’ve heard the words “Drupal” and “Joomla” but think they may be ancient tribes, have I got the online seminar for you. Since one of the most common questions I hear from a potential client is “What is a CMS, anyway?” we’ve put together a webinar to answer just this question.

Sign up on our website (for free), and you can learn:

• What a CMS (content management system) is and what it does (hint: it’s a great way for you to manage your website)
• Why it’s important for nonprofits
• Advice on how to budget for a CMS project
• And more!

Hope to connect with you May 20 at 2 p.m. Eastern.

http://www.talance.com/event-registration