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.

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:

ClickTale

Clicky

Crazy Egg

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.

Learn more at this webinar.

“Track your rivals.Then eat their lunch.”

No questions about what Compete does. You can check statistics for your website and your competitors’ websites to give yourself the upper hand in competitive intelligence.

[From a piece I wrote for FUMSI magazine.]