If you’ve never seen the words “how to” followed by “design by committee” without words like “throw yourself out a window because you were involved in this horror show known as” in between, you may be shocked to read on. You may be one of those people who’s been trapped on a committee and all its egomaniacs, petty arguments and grudging concessions and know what a mess committees can make of things like web projects. Wikipedia puts it this way:

“The defining characteristics of ‘design by committee’ are needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision.”

That pretty much sums it up.

But as much as people hate to have web projects designed or decided by committee, it still happens. All the time. Like at almost every company we work with. So, as much as it pains me to write this article, I’ll do it anyway knowing that if a committee is going to be involved in a web project, it should at least be run the best way possible.

Don’t design by committee

I know what I just said, but if you can find a way of disbanding the committee, do it. Have one capable, knowledgeable person in charge, and other parties involved weigh in at appropriate times. Note I said “weigh in” and “appropriate.” Not make the final call, unless those parties are uniquely qualified to do so.

I once worked on a website project for teens. The COO – in other words, the 50-something-year-old who was in charge of writing contracts and making sure the organization was following its overall strategic objective – decided that keys were a better teen image than whatever shape the designer came up with. I suppose the reasoning was something like most people get a driver’s license when they’re teens. That means they can drive cars. You start cars with keys. So the final design had keys all over it, which looked weird and spoke to no one.

Opinions are valuable, but they’re just opinions. Let the experts make the final call.

If there’s no escape, organize responsibilities

If a committee is unavoidable, assign separate responsibilities rather than giving everyone a share in every single responsibility. The trouble is taste is inherently subjective. Some will agree, but many will have different opinions. Giving everyone a chance to weigh in on everything goes exactly nowhere. Or worse, it leads to compromise. (”I hate the blue.” “Well, I hate the red.” “Then let’s just choose green. At least nobody hates it.”)

Yet, if you give each person on the team his or her own role and responsibility, they can feel as protective about the thing they’re in charge of as they like. Plus, it helps eliminate indecision and might actually move a project along faster.

Foster collaboration rather than compromise

Sometimes nixing the “I don’t like” and the “that’s ugly” kind of comments can make a difference. When reviewing a design or idea, ask instead, “What works and what doesn’t? Why?” Instead of making or responding to visceral comments, ask, “What can we tell the designer that will address our concerns?” Reasoning and thinking together can help you arrive at rational decisions that leave everyone feeling included.

Speak for your audience, not yourself

The bane of committees is the egomaniac who feels their preference must be reflected in the design. If you’re the rational person on the team, you may understandably feel irritated. Remember, preferences are natural. The person you are and the position you have will influence your taste. You can’t help it if your gut is telling you that you like something or that you don’t. It’s what guts do.

Understand this reaction, and make every effort to direct the conversation to the people who really matter: your audience members. Ideally, this will take the form of user testing. Even informal user testing, where you send the idea to a handful of your audience members and ask for their feedback.

If you can’t do a simple audience survey for some reason, at least put yourself in their shoes. If you were your main demographic, would you respond to these colors? If you were of a certain age and background, would you respond to that style of writing? Do the people who use your site use products whose designs are similar to what you’re considering?

Despite your best intentions, you may very well be pulled into a committee or form one. As long as you make sure you’re asking the right questions, and everyone can come to a sensible decision.

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The best websites are organized websites. Plan your pages with a content analysis before you write one word. Here’s how to start:

Define your writing style.

You might appear in some of the most distinguished academic publications in the nation, but is that what your website visitors read? If they’re teens looking for activism opportunities, probably not. Think about the writing style (serious, academic, slangy, sensational) they’re most likely to respond to before you start to write.

Create categories.

Divide your existing or to-be-written pages into main categories. They may align with your menu options, but don’t think too much about that yet. Just group pages into the most important categories. Better to be general at this early stage than overly specific.

Make a content inventory.

Take a close look at the pages you already have and decide if they fit into your categories. If there are gaps, plan for new pages. Add all pages – existing or planned-for – into a spreadsheet. Add columns for categories, intended audience members, who’s responsible for writing each page, importance, topics, keywords or anything else you might notice.

This kind of analysis takes work, but it’s the best way to know that you’re saying what you need to say. It will also help you enlist the right authors and give you a clear understanding of the most vital – and outdated – information on your website.

One of the first questions we ask during the kickoff of a new project is, “Who’s taking ownership of this project?” It’s incredible how many times that answer is, “Nobody.”

Unless you plan to let your website turn into a ghost town, put somebody in charge. Appointing no one as the website manager will have one of two outcomes: no one will do anything and your site will rot, or someone will do everything, but you’ll never respect or realize the amount of work they do.

Being a website manager is a big job. Bigger than you may realize. This is often the go-to person for all questions and updates for the website. If anyone wants something done, it falls to them. And the job doesn’t end. When the web development project is over, you take over updates and maintenance.

OK, now I’ve convinced you that you need to appoint someone as the website manager, and that their job is an important one. But who to appoint? Look for someone who …

Knows a little (not not necessarily a lot) about how web pages are built

Contrary to popular belief, whoever manages your website does no need to be a techno-wiz. If you need any heavy lifting done, it’s usually easier and cheaper to ask your web development company to help out. Of course, providing you have a good relationship with them. The majority of updates to your site will be tweaks here and there, which are mostly text changes. It is helpful if your web manager knows what a P-tag is and has monkeyed around with a content management system or two.

Is wildly organized

To work well with a computer, it helps to think a little like a computer. I’m still talking carbon-based life form, but that life form should be very organized. This person should be keep schedules and be good at documenting methods for updates and changes. They should have systems for organizing copy and pictures. They should remember passwords. They should be good at follow-through.

Is a good promoter

Your manager extraordinaire should also be savvy about promotion. Even if you have a marketing person on staff, your manager should know something about how to submit your website to search engines or repost blog entries. It’s helpful if they’re familiar with Facebook or Twitter, because they can help broadcast your message to a wider public. They can also be looking at new ways to promote your mission beyond what you might think up.

A good web manager can pay for themselves several times over. You’ll be glad you started taking this position seriously.

Many nonprofit organizations that are beginning to adopt Web 2.0 technologies consider them the “cool” part of their online communication. They look at them as a way to engage younger or larger audiences or to project an image of hipness.

But the reason social tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr have become so popular is that they make it incredibly easy for people to work together. Yet, if you look at the internal structure of many organizations, you’ll see that they communicate with one another through phone calls, printed notes and in-person meetings. True, there’s no substitue for face-to-face communication, but social tools can make it much easier to share information among your workmates.

For example, every time we have a meeting at Talance HQ, we have our intranet chat open to facilitate sending links or snippets of documents back and forth. We open a bulletin board for every project so the whole team can communicate about it, and we have a record of everything that was said. Our wiki keeps track of standard procedures and methodologies so we can access them any time, and make revisions when necessary. We use these tools in the office and with our team members who live across the country, and we do it because it’s entirely practical.

The majority of our social tools are built into our website (you do have a CMS, don’t you?). It’s the perfect place to build out a business, because everybody knows your web address, and it’s all centrally stored and accessible online.

Think about what you can do to make it easier for your employees to communicate with one another, and then give them the tools they need. You’ll very well find your organization runs better just by opening up new avenues of communication.

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Hi, Friends.

We’ve got some great tips for you in this year’s very last issue of Talance’s Friendly E-Newsletter for improving your website and online communications strategy:

• Start with our article on how to define your audience (including the most useful questions you’ll have to ask to do so).
• Sign up for our new Websites 1-2-3 package – super powerful websites for your organization that don’t take a super-sized budget (only $1999!).
• Read through highlights from our favorite advice that we picked up on Twitter.
• Find out what everybody loved from our blog in the last month.

Wishing all our friends happy holidays!

From,

Your Internet pals at Talance

Catch is not a one-person game. That game is called Throw the Ball in the Middle of a Field, and it’s no fun.

The same principle applies to launching a new website – you have to have someone to aim to, otherwise, you can expect poor results. That’s why your first step with designing a new website should be to determine your target audience(s) so you can customize your site for them.

How? Start asking questions and see what answers emerge. You can consult whatever demographics information (age range, gender, geography, education, income, hobbies) you already have, and then see if you can develop a clearer profile by asking these questions:

1. What does a typical volunteer/supporter/member look like?
2. What does an ideal volunteer/supporter/member look like?
3. What do many of our volunteers/supporters/members have in common?
4. When we started, who did we have in mind as a volunteer/supporter/member?

You’ll see what a huge difference it makes just knowing why you’re building. And your website visitors will appreciate it too.

Websites 1-2-3 gives you an easy to edit website – fast! Get started with a clean, super-powered website hosted on the Drupal content management system (CMS). Then load it up with a selection of free goodies (like a blog or interactive calendar – or both!). Then sit back while we bring it all together with your custom colors, pictures and logo.

It really is that easy.

» Click here to get started!

In honor of our new offering for congregations, here are some highlights from the Talance Friendly Web Tools Blog. Make sure you’re reading http://talance.com/blog and get automatic updates of new articles.

Reader Question: How Do I Add a Facebook Page to My Page’s Favorites?

How To Start a Blog in 14 Steps for Congregations

21 Ways Volunteers Can Help with Your Website

How to Scrap Your Paper Bulletin

How To Write Really Helpful Web Development RFPs

These are our most-clicked and most discussed postings on Twitter. Want to see what we have to say? Follow us: http://twitter.com/talance.

• For those of you wondering what Facebook Connect is “What’s More Awesome than Sharing? Publishing, with Facebook Connect” http://ow.ly/Ffco
• So much interesting info about Twitter, from Pew Internet & American Life Project http://ow.ly/BVKw
• From @rabbijason, on expanding your marketing message with voice mail messages: How about “We’re not in right now, but u can send us a message on Twitter or write a message on a paper airplane & throw it to us.”
• From @katzpdx You are 100% correct. [Social media] should be treated as another marketing channel/tactic

Need Some Help?

Talance has helped clients launch scores of projects, ranging from websites to online newsletters to CRM projects. Please click here to schedule a time to talk about your next project or to request a proposal.

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[Photo credit: AVP Volunteer 2 by yuan2003, on Flickr]

As any charitable organization knows, volunteers are superstars. They give love and expertise and don’t ask for a dime in return. They can be especially helpful if your organization has a website. Bearing in mind that an entire Web development project is long-term and requires dedicated knowledge and commitment that you’re better off hiring someone to do (upshot: it’s easier to fire someone whose work you’re not happy with), there are still plenty of other tasks you can assign out to people who want to help. Here are a few.

[BTW, did you read Engaging Volunteers in Your Marketing Efforts or Volunteers and Website Management?]

1. Social networking cheerleader
2. Add comments to blogs
3. Contribute blog entries
4. Participate in discussion on bulletin boards
5. Data entry (i.e., cutting and pasting info into a new site)
6. Website promotion
7. Adding your website to directories
8. Writing news updates about events
9. Website literacy workshops
10. Checking for dead links
11. Updating old content
12. Convert press releases for websites
13. Usability testing (i.e., make sure everything works in a logical way)
14. Bug reporting (i.e., look for and report errors or problems)
15. Identify requirements for new development
16. Browser testing
17. Taking pictures for the website
18. Formatting and uploading pictures
19. Making videos for the site
20. Uploading videos onto a service like YouTube or Vimeo, and adding them to site
21. Help manage wiki

Anything we missed? Add your ideas below.

This little gem has been hidden on the main Talance website, but we thought we’d bring it to wider attention. Use this checklist every three months or so to make sure your website is still up to date and healthy.

Site Content

• All links work
• All downloads work
• All forms work
• Contact information on homepage and accessible on every other page
• Addresses organization’s goals
• Has a favicon

Usability

• All images have ALT tags
• Custom 404/page not found page
• Each menu has no more than seven choices
• Home link in navigation
• User-friendly page titles

Readability

• Font size not too small
• Wide margins
• Good use of bullets, subheadings and bold
• No underlines except for hyperlinks
• High contrast text and images

Operation

• Looks OK in most common Web browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera)
• Uses limited Flash to comply with iPhone and iTouch
• Images are sized correctly (i.e., big image not squeezed into small box)
• Colors and images are consistent
• Loads quickly
• Looks OK in different screen resolutions
• Looks OK with various screen color settings
• URLs work without “www”

Security

• Pages requiring SSL access are accessible only via SSL
• No one has access to restricted areas that they shouldn’t have

Twitter updates come as fast as you can draw a sharp breath, but they may not be as spontaneous as they seem. Thanks to a selection of scheduling services, you can create tweets ahead of time and post them in the future, while you’re busy with something else.

Delayed tweeting isn’t the best strategy for building relationships with your followers (can you imagine having your half of a conversation an hour before you meet a friend for lunch?), but it can help when you want to deliver a message but aren’t able to.

For instance, if you want to notify everyone about a new project you’re launching on a set day. You can schedule the announcement to go out while you’re busy setting up said project. Or say you’re at a conference getting ready to speak. You want to tell your followers you’re about to step on stage so they’d better bustle down to the conference room, but you need to give the live audience your full attention.

Here are some tools you can use to set your tweets into the future:

• Hootsuite
• FutureTweets
• TweetLater
• Twuffer
• Calendar Tweet

When people at an organization start sharing information about their website, they’re generally surprised at how much their ideas differ. That’s one of the key reasons you need to assemble a reliable website committee to guide your organization through the process of building or redesigning your website. These people can help you decide who your audience is, clarify the purpose of your site and determine how it meshes with your organization’s mission.

Put together a group of people that represent different parts of your organization. Maybe this is the executive director, volunteer coordinator and office manager, along with whoever is part of your communications committee. Don’t have a communications committee? Get one.

Having a Web dream team helps you gather feedback in an organized way, without everybody’s opinion overwhelming you. But remember that it’s imperative for successful projects to have one person who can give the nod on development, and then have one person who can give the nod on an ongoing basis. Make sure you appoint a leader to your dream team who is a master of organizing and moving things forward.

Volunteers are great members of your dream team. Frequently, your supporters know how to do more than you think. I guarantee you have marketing, communication or technology specialists who are fans of what you do. Recruit them to help.

All (successful) development projects work with a team of people who are able to work together on a single goal. They’re the keepers of the project and can steer it in the right way, so borrow from what works.

At home, the flower beds are clean, the trees are pruned and the windows are sparklingly clear. I, probably like most of you, have been doing spring cleaning, and working my way down a list of home maintenance and improvement tasks. It’s satisfying to check those items off and look at the polished result.

At work, I’m also doing spring cleaning, and I hope some of you are too. I like to take some time every six months or so (call the second session fall clean-up) to tidy up some of the messiness that has worked its way into our website over the winter months. It’s also a good time to stand back and make some critical decisions about the functionality of your website and evaluate the direction you’re headed. Websites should never sit stagnant, and putting some time on the calendar at least twice a year to evaluate your strategy should be a given.

This week, we’ll guide you through a clean-up and revitalizing process that you can follow on your own website. Today we’ve got three things you can do to prep for your week of good housekeeping.

Put together a clean team. You’re about to do a major clean-up and make some big decisions. It’s not something one person should do alone, so put together a task force. If you are an army of one, just make sure to pace yourself. Here’s a good model for putting together a team:

• You should have someone at a high level who can either make these decisions or who has the power to put them on the schedule for evaluation.
• Also appoint someone to act as project manager. The person to put together a schedule, arrange meeting times and generally make sure everyone is moving along.
• Finally, have one or more people to do the busy work: someone to update copy, remove dead links, make little changes. Volunteers can be a big help here.

Dedicate half an hour every day. Consistency is the key to spring cleaning – not killing yourself with work. Just set aside half an hour or an hour every day for a week to evaluate what needs to be done. Your task may take longer than half an hour, but you’ll be able to budget how much time you’ll need to do it in half an hour.

Set up a place to submit comments/ideas. While you’re cleaning up the website you have, you’re going to have ideas about the website you wish you had. Establish a place for you and your team to submit ideas or discoveries so you can decide if you want to add new functionality to your website. Check out this earlier post Make a Better Website with a User Survey for ideas of how to collect ideas and responses.

Good luck setting up today. Tune in tomorrow for the next step in your polished-up website, and click here to see all stories about spring cleaning.