[Photo credit: Spaghetti and Meatballs (explore) by jshj, on Flickr]

Inclusiveness is always nice to have in any project, Web-related or otherwise. Give everybody a voice, and everybody’s happy, right?

Wrong.

In fact, having too many voices feeding into your website can create chaos for your users. The problem is that everybody has their own ideas about what belongs on a website, and those ideas might compete with one another. Plus, there’s only so much room on a homepage. You can’t cram everything on.

Add to this the fact that some of those people jockeying for their ideas to appear on your website know absolutely nothing about creating a manageable experience for Web visitors, and you’ve got one snarled, political plate of website spaghetti.

If you’re at a non-profit, there’s a good chance a little light bulb is going on over your head right now. You’ve been there. Too many people trying to take control of the site. Sadly, this is a problem non-profits frequently have, since many organizations are managed by committee. That might (or might not) make sense for day-to-day operations, but it never works with websites.

Nip this problem in the bud. Take these steps to make sure your Web project starts off with a clear vision and a clean outcome.

Include everybody – at the start.

Our solution is to send out a “needs assessment” at the very beginning of a project. This survey, distributed to a whole bunch of people, gives everybody a chance to say what they think is important to have on the website and makes everyone feel included.

Form a small committee.

Hand those surveys over to the core website team to scan for insights, ideas and important issues. And, of course, to sort out the muck. But importantly, this body is small, and has only one head.

Appoint a strategist.

It’s helpful that the leader of that team be uniformly concerned with the experience your website visitors have, the marketing and business message of your organization and have some idea of the way technology works. If this isn’t possible, at least choose a person humble enough to take direction from a hired Web strategy consultant. That’s money well spent.

[Photo credit: Adopt a Pet, Live Longer! by sayheypatrick, on Flickr]

You may already have a Donate page on your website where you make it possible (and easy) for people to support you. But how many people click through to your Donate page compared to other pages of your site? I’m willing to make the sad bet it’s not at the top of the list.

Some pages, though, are stars. They consistently receive more visitors than other pages. This might be the Dog of the Week adoption page or your contact information page. People either love or need what’s there, so they come back, day after day.

While you should stay true to the main focus of these pages, start to think of them as a way to reach out to potential donors by putting a call to donate on these busiest pages of your site.

To find which pages pull in the droves, tap your Web analytics service, such as Clicky or Google Analytics. Most have a section that lists the top 10 or more pages in terms of traffic. Pick the top pages from this list and ask people to support there.

It helps if you can elegantly work in the plea for funds with the focus of the page. If it’s the Homeless Dog of the Week page, for instance, you may want to include something like:

“Can’t take Buster home? Support him and his doggy friends by donating $20 right now by clicking here.”

That’s it. Stand back, keep checking your traffic and donation box, and see if your income doesn’t increase. Make sure to come back and tell us how it went.

Asking for monetary support should be integrated into every website belonging to a non-profit, synagogue and church. But there are other ways to let your members give than just writing a check.

Web developer Jeff Robbins had a great idea you can replicate for your charitable organization. He has developed a slew of tools for web developers for free, but for those who want to show their gratitude, he created an Amazon wish list full of tools and trinkets from all price ranges that he wants or needs:

And he’s getting them. His fans have bought him books, podcasting equipment, and other tools that he uses in his work.

It works because sometimes it’s easier for people to give support when there’s a tangible goal in mind. It’s the same reason I prefer to give my niece and nephew an actual gift for their birthdays rather than a check. I can picture them using the gift instead of simply absorbing the cash.

Money is great, but supplies cost real money, so you might as well make a list of them and ask for donations. Does your organization need a netbook, printer, digital recorder, books, hanging file folders, office printer, snacks for the lounge – anything that Amazon sells, which is basically anything? Set up a wish list, and you might be surprised at what you get.

Video is a fabulous way to spread awareness, so think about blowing the dust off your YouTube account next time you want to drum up support for one of your organization’s programs.

International Medical Corps is an organization that’s spreading awarness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and it’s been tremendously successful with thousands of views and thousands of comments.

Are you planning some kind of event or have a fund drive that you can get help for by putting online?

[This article is part of a 4-part series on cleaning up your website. Check out the other articles on freshening up your design, copy and links.]

As time passes and your goals and objectives evolve, so should your website copy. If you’ve been following our series on spring cleaning your website, including putting together a clean team and purging dead links (click here to see all the articles in the series), you’ll be in the perfect place to start focusing on the words and structure that you use to communicate with your audience.

While keeping up on your website copy isn’t as fluid an activity as is purging your dead links, you still need to make sure your site is connecting to people appropriately and that you’re broadcasting the right message. Always watch your analytics to make sure you’re receiving the responses you expect. Otherwise, it’s time to make some changes.

The process of cleaning up your copy should be an abbreviated version of the one you followed when you began to write copy for your website. Here’s how you should start from scratch:

1. Come up with a website architecture, or wireframe, that outlines every page of your site. That way you know what you need to provide copy for.
2. Scope out the key concepts you want to convey for each page, usually three to five bullets for each page.
3. Round up your research and source material to support your key concepts.
4. Identify the appropriate tone for your website – chummy or serious?

Here’s the abbreviated version of the process you should follow when you’re cleaning up your content:

1. Review your site structure. Do you have all the pages you need? The link-checking process you went through earlier should have identified gaps and unnecessary pages.
2. Evaluate your message. Does the copy on those pages still match up with your key concepts? Do those key concepts still reflect your organization?
3. Incorporate updates. Do you have additional research and source material to boost your copy? Look for new case studies, testimonials or tools, like social media widgets like a Twitter feed or most recent blog entries.
4. Watch your tone. Does the copy’s tone still match your organization’s personality? You might find the tone too academic, or too punchy when you first wrote it, and it doesn’t accurately represent your mission.
5. Finally, fix problems. This is possibly the most important step, and it’s a great chance to address any communications problems you’re having. For instance, your front desk might be fielding calls about directions or e-mailing forms that you can easily transfer to your site. Seek out potential communications bottlenecks, such as poor search engine results, i.e., SEO issues, that you can address with better copy.

Check back tomorrow to pick up the next article in our series on spring cleaning your website. Make sure you don’t miss anything by subscribing to the RSS news feed. Not sure what an RSS feed is? Click here.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a great article about what prevents people from giving online (Confusing Web Sites Discourage Donors From Online Giving). What does it come down to? Bad design.

Nielsen Norman Group, which conducted the research and wrote it into this report. A summary of the biggest problems, which I can testify are the same problems we fix too:

• Poor presentation of the charity’s mission
• No information on how contributions are spent
• Poor page design and unclear content makes it hard to find how to donate

Most of those issues are text related, so make your changes right now.

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.

It’s not often that yours truly gets to share the stage with anyone, much less a fancy pants like poet laureate Robert Pinsky. But here I am, helping my friends at non-profit JBooks.com, try to garner money through a YouTube video plea. (Look for my Oscar-worthy eye-roll.)

Watch and enjoy:

Nothing wrenches the heart like a dehydrated koala. I know I’ve watched the koala drinking water on the YouTube Bush Fire Tragedy Crisis video at least a dozen times since it went up.

It’s sweet and heartrending, but it’s also a great lesson by in the power of the video, the web and asking for money when you need it. This isn’t just a YouTube video. It also contains a plea from Victoria, Australia’s RSPCA for animal welfare donations and a note that international donations are welcome. It’s working. People from all over the world have given a money – sometimes just a few dollars – to help. It’s adding up to a lot more support than this koala would receive if it hadn’t starred on the web.

But it’s also a lesson in making sure your backend is capable of handling a sudden influx of support. The RSPCA servers are having trouble accepting all the donations that are coming in. If you have a cause for money (especially if it involves a desperately cute cuddly animal that drinks from a bottle while holding your hand), make sure you have a backup plan for taking donations when they’re offered.

See the video:

With some mighty big funders losing money because of the bad economy and the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, this is a good time for nonprofits embrace grassroots fundraising. This, after all, is how the president-to-be was able to raise such an enormous sum: lots of people making moderate donations.

If you’re not raising funds online, do it! Too many websites make it too hard – or impossible – to give online. Here are the top 10 transgressions I’ve seen many times. Learn from these mistakes.

1. No Donate or Give button. Don’t be shy. People want to donate. How will they know to if you don’t ask?
2. Donate/Give button not big enough. Make it easy for them to see a donate button. Big red or orange buttons are good.
3. No way to pay online. Sometimes those big buttons lead to an e-mail or snail mail address. People sit at their computers with a credit card in hand, ready to pay. Our clients use our shopping cart technology to collect donations, sell T-shirts and mugs or accept reservations for events – all classified as fundraising. That’s the best return on your investment, and there are plenty of free services out there too.
4. Clashing systems. Make sure your fundraising efforts dance together, not bump into each other. Coordinate direct mail campaigns with online campaigns, with a goal of moving more online. It’s vastly cheaper.
5. Neglecting other technology. You can ask for support though e-mail, blog, Facebook, and other places in addition to your website.
6. Paranoia. I’m always a little surprised to hear how many people think it’s unsafe to ask for money online. True, nothing is completely safe from fraud, and you shouldn’t be taking credit card numbers through e-mail, but donating through a secure website is much safer than a check in the mail.
7. Asking for support once. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
8. Not rallying the troops. Tell others to tell their friends about how they donated. Give them a button for their website that links back to yours. Have your supporters help by spreading the word.
9. Not tracking. There are great tools out there that you can use that track the number of people who’ve visited your site and what they did when they got there. Make sure you keep records of traffic and compare it month by month to see how your online fundraising campaign is doing.
10. Bad publicity. Asking for money isn’t enough. You need to market your campaign. Aim for media coverage, write about new campaigns in all of your literature and partner with other organizations for added punch.